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Embattled Colleton County, South Carolina clerk of court Becky Hill is the focus of two separate inquiries currently pending before the S.C. State Ethics Commission (SCSEC) – twin investigations which could soon be referred to the S.C. State Law Enforcement Division (SLED) for criminal prosecution.
In fact, multiple sources familiar with these investigations said they believe both of Hill’s pending ethics cases will wind up at SLED … sooner rather than later.
“They are leaning strongly toward referring them to SLED,” a source close to the investigation told us this week.
The two ethics investigations into Hill are potentially intertwined with an ongoing SLED investigation into allegations of jury tampering against the independently elected clerk of court. According to our sources, one of the two ethics investigations tied to Hill has a direct Murdaugh nexus – namely the publication of her recent book, Behind the Doors of Justice: The Murdaugh Murders.
The second investigation is reportedly tied to allegations of misappropriated funds from the clerk’s office budget. It is not immediately clear whether that inquiry has any tie to the murder trial that made Hill a household name.
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Hill’s office oversaw convicted killer Alex Murdaugh’s six-week double murder trial earlier this year – an international spectacle which has been referred to as the ‘Trial of the Century’ in the Palmetto State. She was also the one who announced Murdaugh’s guilty verdicts to a waiting world on the evening of March 2, 2023. In early September, though, the script flipped. Murdaugh’s attorneys – led by Dick Harpootlian and Jim Griffin – dropped a bombshell motion accusing Hill of tampering with the Colleton County jury that decided Murdaugh’s fate.
“Hill betrayed her oath of office for money and fame,” Harpootlian and Griffin alleged, accusing Hill of improperly influencing jurors against Murdaugh.
An evidentiary hearing into the allegations against Hill is likely to take place sometime in February or March of 2024.
Hill has denied any wrongdoing – and initial reports have pointed to there being some substance to her denials.
In the intervening months, however, Hill and her family members have come under withering scrutiny.
Hill’s memoirs were published in late July. Prior to her announcing them, Hill wrote SCSEC officials and asked if she could publish a book based on “the process of (the) trial from beginning to end, focusing on the process itself, the history of it and of course the high-profile cases that South Carolina has had.”
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RELATED | COLLETON COUNTY IT DIRECTOR ARRESTED
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Ethics officials were not thrilled with the idea, telling Hill she need to ask herself if the opportunity to publish such a volume “arose as a result of your position as clerk of court” – and to consider whether the publication of such a narrative was in any way tied to her “official responsibility” as a public official.
“In the opinion of commission staff, it seems unlikely that writing a book would fall within your official responsibilities as clerk of court,” Hill was advised. “However, you will have to make that ultimate determination based on your official duties and the guidelines offered above.”
Hill went ahead with the book – a decision which appears to have sparked much of the ensuing legal drama currently ensnaring her family.
Earlier this month, our Andy Fancher exclusively reported that Hill’s son – Colleton County information technology director Jeffrey “Colt” Hill – was under investigation by SLED for “illegally recording conversations” involving Meagan Utsey, the deputy county administrator. Last week, Fancher exclusively reported this investigation had borne fruit – notably Jeffrey Hill’s arrest on one count of wiretapping for having “willfully and feloniously intercept(ed) electronic phone communication.”
SLED subsequently issued a news release announcing Jeffrey Hill’s arrest.
This news outlet has since learned the wiretapping investigation into Jeffrey Hill could soon extend to county emails as well as recorded phone conversations. We were also informed investigators are exploring obstruction of justice charges against both Becky Hill and Jeffrey Hill as it relates to the mushrooming wiretapping scandal.
According to our sources, Jeffrey Hill’s alleged wiretapping of Utsey began in early June and continued through late July – which is when county staffers first became aware of the surreptitious recordings and reported them to ethics investigators.
Here is where things get interesting …
Around that same time – in late July – Becky Hill’s county-issued cell phone number was reportedly “released” from its taxpayer-funded Verizon account and promptly added to her personal account. This, we are told, was part of an effort to evade accountability – specifically, to dodge a looming subpoena from the ethics commission for Becky Hill’s cell phone records. Whatever motivated the account switcheroo, Becky Hill’s county-issued cell phone was removed from the county cell phone plan by the time a subpoena was eventually issued for it by ethics investigators in mid-August.
As our readers are aware, Becky Hill’s cell phone was the focus of a separate subpoena tied to the criminal probe into her son’s alleged wiretapping. As Fancher reported last week, Becky Hill was “forced to surrender her phone to SLED upon the issuance of a search warrant Tuesday evening.”
The cell phone seized by SLED was not the same device she used during the Murdaugh trial, incidentally.
The saga surrounding Hill – and its potential implications on Alex Murdaugh’s request for a new trial – formed the basis of our latest Week In Review program.
To listen to that episode, click here …
Count on our media outlet to keep our audience up to speed on the very latest developments related to this ongoing spinoff of the ‘Murdaugh Murders‘ crime and corruption saga.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR …
Will Folks is the founding editor of the news outlet you are currently reading. Prior to founding FITSNews, he served as press secretary to the governor of South Carolina. He lives in the Midlands region of the state with his wife and seven children.
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22 comments
I’ll be unusually brief and hope you, Mr. Folks or Mr. Fancher or Ms. Wood answer yes or no:
Have you ACTUALLY read Becky Hill’s book IN ITS ENTIRETY?
My guess is no!
I agree with you because it is impossible to have read that book in its entirety and not see a huge conspiracy to convict a man innocent of murders for the financial gains of others.
Innocent? LOL. Yeah, no. No one else had the opportunity or motive but ole’ Alex. The data from the car plots his every move that night, as do eyewitnesses regarding how long he stayed at his mother’s which correlates to the car info. Then there is the matter of the financial crimes, all of which he pled guilty to.
The CORRECT understanding of the REAL data exonerates Alex Murdaugh (“AM”) of the murders.
And I want to analyze them for you here in case you have not read my analysis elsewhere.
And I shall do that under both the State’s time-of-death theory and my MEDICAL time-of-death theory.
The Prosecution insists people die when the batteries on their cell phones do. Accepting that JUST FOR THE SAKE OF ARGUMENT, there is no question that AM arrived at his mother’s around 9:30 pm. How long he stayed there provides him no alibi whatsoever if the murders occurred BEFORE 9:00 pm.
ALSO, had AM been the real killer, he would spent the night at his parents’ home and let the bodies be discovered by Moselle workers in the morning.
Everyone knows that the first suspicions center around the person who finds the bodies. AM would surely have known that.
AND, that particular night, an extra bed was vacant and available in AM’s parents’ house: AM’s father was in hospital; and the father’s normal bed was vacant and available. AM would have had a VERY VALID excuse to spend the night at his parents’ house: to comfort his agitated mother in her husband’s absence.
So, had AM been the real killer; and had the murders REALLY occurred before 9:00 pm, AM would have known and would have stayed with his mother all night and left the bodies to be discovered the next morning by Moselle workers.
NOW, under the MEDICAL theory of the time of death, which is between 9:30 pm and 9:50 pm because the victims had dinner AFTER 8:00 pm little of which remained in their stomachs at autopsy and would not have been mostly emptied as early 8:50 pm, it is clear that AM was either at his parents’ home or returning from it at that time.
So, either way AM has an iron-clad alibi.
The easy answers to the too-stupid-to-mention “sympathy” “motive” are: (1) AM already had more than enough sympathy from the impeding death of his terminal father who did die two days after the murders; and (2) if JUST FOR THE SAKE OF ARGUMENT, another dead family member was needed, would not JUST ONE have been enough. AM could have just killed Maggie or Paul; no need to kill BOTH. He also could have killed “the chosen one” by slipping them an over-dose of opioids.
I have shown respect for you with this serious analysis. Please do not repay my respect with insults.
Workers! LOL You act like he had a full staff running the place . . he did not – they had a part-time housekeeper! Who started AFTER Mrs. Satterfield was killed from falling SMH . . . No one would have “found” the bodies . . How could Alex not find them that night because then he would also have to explain why he wasn’t concerned where his wife was in the middle of the night . . . you need to get facts straight… No one else would have killed Maggie and Paul … you are buying into this mans lies that just continue and continue —
C.olleton County – the gift that keeps on giving……
Goody 3, please allow me to use your post to reply to “Kris” because there is no reply option to click on on his claiming that I was mistaken (or insane) about workers at Moselle.
From the Prosecution’s OWN WITNESSES, there were at least TWO male workers at Moselle and a female worker.
The two male workers are the dog-handler who fed the dogs and cleaned the kennels twice a day, once as early as 6:00 am and another time before 4:00 pm. The other male worker was C.B. Rowe, who had oversprayed the dove field with pesticide; and it had to be replanted.
The female worker is Blanca, who was there per Maggie’s request. So, any of the three could have discovered the bodies the next morning had Alex Murdaugh been the real killer and spent the night in his father’s empty bed in his parents’ house 20-30 minutes away.
I am tired of explaining this; so, I count on YOU to make that reply for me.
Thanks!
Good Ole Southern backdoor politics at its finest…I sense there is much more to the story, much of it never will find its way to the public….
No doubt that Dick Harpootlian, Murdaugh & company are behind the “withering scrutiny”. This is all an effort to destroy the character & credibility of Becky Hill ultimately to get the murder conviction overturned. I pray this never happens & is stopped in its tracks. Alex Murdaugh is a deplorable monster & convicted murderer.
Alex Murdaugh (“AM”) is a WRONGLY-CONVICTED man.
The CORRECT understanding of the REAL data exonerates AM of the murders.
And I want to analyze them for you here in case you have not read my analysis elsewhere.
And I shall do that under both the State’s time-of-death theory and my MEDICAL time-of-death theory.
The Prosecution insists people die when the batteries on their cell phones do. Accepting that JUST FOR THE SAKE OF ARGUMENT, there is no question that AM arrived at his mother’s around 9:30 pm. How long he stayed there provides him no alibi whatsoever if the murders occurred BEFORE 9:00 pm.
ALSO, had AM been the real killer, he would spent the night at his parents’ home and let the bodies be discovered by Moselle workers in the morning.
Everyone knows that the first suspicions center around the person who finds the bodies. AM would surely have known that.
AND, that particular night, an extra bed was vacant and available in AM’s parents’ house: AM’s father was in hospital; and the father’s normal bed was vacant and available. AM would have had a VERY VALID excuse to spend the night at his parents’ house: to comfort his agitated mother in her husband’s absence.
So, had AM been the real killer; and had the murders REALLY occurred before 9:00 pm, AM would have known and would have stayed with his mother all night and left the bodies to be discovered the next morning by Moselle workers.
NOW, under the MEDICAL theory of the time of death, which is between 9:30 pm and 9:50 pm because the victims had dinner AFTER 8:00 pm little of which remained in their stomachs at autopsy and would not have been mostly emptied as early 8:50 pm, it is clear that AM was either at his parents’ home or returning from it at that time.
So, either way AM has an iron-clad alibi.
The easy answers to the too-stupid-to-mention “sympathy” “motive” are: (1) AM already had more than enough sympathy from the impeding death of his terminal father who did die two days after the murders; and (2) if JUST FOR THE SAKE OF ARGUMENT, another dead family member was needed, would not JUST ONE have been enough. AM could have just killed Maggie or Paul; no need to kill BOTH. He also could have killed “the chosen one” by slipping them an over-dose of opioids.
I have shown respect for you with this serious analysis. Please do not repay my respect with insults
Aply named
The best response to your cruelty to me comes from quoting John 18:22-24:
22When Jesus had said this, one of the officers standing nearby slapped Him in the face and said, “Is this how You answer the high priest?” 23Jesus replied, “If I said something wrong, testify as to what was wrong. But if I spoke correctly, why did you strike Me?” 24Then Annas sent Him, still bound, to Caiaphas the high priest .…
Just so you know, in case you have not read it elsewhere, I PERSONALLY know the VERY PEOPLE who railroaded Alex Murdaugh (“AM”) into two wrongful murder convictions because their friends (or payors) wanted AM’s Moselle because those people are obsessed with shooting beautiful living deer for the trophy of their horns and no trophy is ever enough for them.
I respect natural, reasonable, ecology-respecting hunting for food (though I never did it); but trophy-hunting and catch-and-release I loathe.
I know those people, Hatchet-for-Hire Heather, David Fernandez, Johnny James, John Meadors, and Donald Zelenka, and their assistants and collaborators because they tried, and are still trying, to bring false criminal charges against me to wrest from me a sliver of vacant land my mother and I unsuspectingly bought in March 2009 to build on it a completely solar house for ourselves. We bought it not knowing that the City of Columbia and the adjacent property owner had run illegally and surreptitiously run their sewer lines across and underneath that lot making it unbuildable.
When I sued for them to re-route the sewer lines away from my land (very feasible at minimal cost to them), they anawered by getting me falsely arrested and made homeless at Christmas time and at risk of homelessness ever since.
I wish the people who TRIED but, thank God, failed to railroad ME into two “harassment-in-the-first-degree” wrongful convictions with an evil plan to get me sentenced to 36 years, YES, THIRTY-SIX, by non other than Judge Clifton Newman would reimburse me and my family for our costs in exposing my evil prosecutors’/persecutors’ perjury, subornation of perjury, forgeries and fabrications against me.
Your insulting what I write as “drivel” will not change the facts that I have transcripts of my own cases AND I have page citations from Becky Hill’s books. Nothing can change that.
1. Excellent coverage of Murdaugh’s financial sentencing, today! Well done team FITSNEWS!
2. As for Becky Hill: she and her son are in a heap of trouble. This is going to be interesting.
Looking forward to your reporting. Again, job well done!
Amelia Price, please allow me to use your post to reply to “Kris” because there is no reply option to click on on his claiming that I was mistaken (or insane) about workers at Moselle.
From the Prosecution’s OWN WITNESSES, there were at least TWO male workers at Moselle and a female worker.
The two male workers are the dog-handler who fed the dogs and cleaned the kennels twice a day, once as early as 6:00 am and another time before 4:00 pm. The other male worker was C.B. Rowe, who had oversprayed the dove field with pesticide; and it had to be replanted.
The female worker is Blanca, who was there per Maggie’s request. So, any of the three could have discovered the bodies the next morning had Alex Murdaugh been the real killer and spent the night in his father’s empty bed in his parents’ house 20-30 minutes away.
I am tired of explaining this; so, I count on YOU to make that reply for me.
Thanks!
Might as well comment here because Jumpsuit Pablo commented on Alex Murdaugh’s (“AM”) snot coming only from one side of his nose; and on AM eating it instead of wiping it off, even with his hand in shackles.
This is what happens when people with no medical education whatsover play doctor because they have had crime experience or prison experience or whatever.
Of the paired organs of senses, both eyes need to be functioning TOGETHER all the waking time for depth perception; and both ears need to be functioning TOGETHER all the time for balance (the ears are for BOTH sound and balance) and for sound direction.
But BOTH nostrils do NOT need to function TOGETHER all the time. That is why the nasal septum is NORMALLY a little deviated AND one nostril is usually swollen shut at any one time.
Why is that?
The nostrils have both intake and discharge functions. The intake function is not only for smell but to filter and warm the air coming into the lungs. So, the nostrils/nasal canals ALTERNATE being open/swollen shut to allow the minute items filtered out on one side to drain out by gravity while the other side does the intake and warming until the cold incoming air reaches temperature equilibrium with the inner lining of the open nostril, which continues to have the capillaries dilated for warmth until the dilation shuts that nostril out. Then, the other nostril, now clean, opens and strarts capillary dilation for warmth; and so forth.
These cycles are of such short duration that there is AN ILLUSION of both nostrils functioning together all the time. And that why Jumpsuit Pablo noticed it only by stopping the frame.
As to swallowing one’s OWN snot; it is no different than swallowing one’s OWN saliva, which happens all the time. Both are rich with immune polypeptides and the body does not usually recognize them as foreign antigens because they are not. Of course, swallowing OTHERS’ immune polypeptides is another story.
Capice?
Alex Murdaugh’s (“AM”) so-called “victims” and many podcasters and journalists are ignorant hypocrites.
And you Annie are throwing away the BASICS of journalism.
First, ABC 4’s Annie Emmerson, AM DID SAY he was sorry his financial actions caused SLED to not go after “the person or people” who killed Paul and Maggie. So, what is your interpretation of his NOT saying more? That AM was happy his wife and younger son got killed, only unhappy that SLED did not look for the real murderers?
AM expressed his sorrow to all who loved Paul and Maggie because they were the living ones.
And AM showed his real fatherly affection by taking this ONLY OCCASION to give moral support to Buster, who continues to be UNFAIRLY, BASELESSLY and FALSELY blamed for Stephen Smith’s death.
I thought it showed real nobility of AM to care about Buster, who was not even in the room, AND to encourage other addicts to seek treatment and rehabilitation as early as possible.
Why is that bad or wrong?
You, Charlie Condon, called it “info-mercial” for a particular facility!!! How clever and cold of you!!! If you had a son who is addicted, wouldn’t you want to know what facilities are the best? Heck! Aren’t there many websites dedicated to patients evaluating medical providers of every specialty?
Now, for you Charlie Condon, as an attorney general: you fostered and PROMOTED the system of farming out the Attorney General’s work to private lawyers who inflated their fees and fleeced the “faceless” tax-payers. Did you do anything to monitor or correct those thefts? No.
Worse yet, those private lawyers, who turned around and contributed to your political campaigns with the money they stole from the tax-payers had REAL individual victims.
I had document proog that one such private lawyer knew I was right, that the University of South Carolina (“USC”) had WRONGLY fired me the first time, that a panel from USC itself had ruled that I had been wrongly terminated and must be reinstated. That private lawyer wrote to USC to fire me AGAIN and let her defend USC at tax-payers’ expense if and when I sue USC.
I brought you the papers which left no dout. What did you do? You told me to get out. You did not even look at them.
You are WORSE than AM.
Then there is that Jim Jordan (“JJ”), who tearfully pretended he would have given AM the money had AM asked for it. Well, let’s test that! AM is now penniless but JJ received all the money from other sources “and then some,” according to Eric Bland and Justin Bamberg.
Did JJ send his beloved friend AM any canteen money? Did JJ even comfort Buster in his embattled state? Did JJ go and put flowers on Maggie’s grave? NO, no, no. It was all an act choreographed by the lawyers to extort more money from the law firms and the insurance companies.
Gloria Satterfield died IN HOSPITAL of natural causes 24 days after COINCIDENTALLY having fallen at Moselle. Her heirs had NOTHING stolen from them because they were entitled to NOTHING for the myocardial infarction of an overweight 50-something woman with chronic, poorly-managed diabetes.
Who is paying YOU three to abandon common sense and all journalistic integrity?
Subzero is either Dick or Jim…
I even have my photo attached to my nom de plume. Neither Dick nor Jim is that beautiful or that smart.
Neither Dick nor Jim is a medical doctor.
Jim’s late father was a doctor; but Jim was either not smart enough or not hard-working enough to go to medical school himself. Being a medical doctor’s son made Jim a hypochondriac, not a medical doctor.
And most significantly, neither Dick nor Jim has PERSONALLY experienced being falsely accused for others to gain unfair advantages in civil ligation.
If anything, I think Dick’s and Jim’s sins of omission from when they were themselves prosecutors have come back to bite them in a case for which they care much.
The jury system and the verdict forms in criminal cases in South Carolina have not evolved in centuries.
Can you imagine if Medicine and Surgery were practiced today as they were in, say, 1856?
Yet, Jim chose his closing argument to tell the jury that there should be three options: Guilty, NOT proven, and NOT guilty, instead of just Guilty or Not Guilty.
Where was that idea when Dick and/or Jim were themselves prosecutors?
They never tried to advance the law because the law as it is favors prosecutors, lazy prosecutors at that.
While you put me on my soap box about lazy prosecutors, let me declaim the “hand of one is the hand of all” so called “principle” or “rule.”
Do you know how and why this came about?
Because lazy prosecutors did not want to bother to figure out who, for example, is the actual shooter if two or more people other than the victim were present at the scene.
Lazy prosecutors were afraid each suspect present would point the finger at one of the others as the actual shooter; and the confused jury would acquit everyone.
The result often is that a bystander gets the death penalty while the real shooter gets acquitted or gets a lighter sentence.
So, prosecutors who were too lazy or too dumb to advance the law when they were prosecutors face the results of their omissions when they become criminal defence lawyers, as most prosecutors who do not retire or die on the job do.
What more do you want to know that I am neither Dick nor Jim but only appreciate their devotion to their innocent, wrongly-convicted client?
subzeroiq is either the egg lady, harpootlian or griffin.. take out the trash!!!
The unjustly-dismissed juror (whom you call “the egg lady”) and SubZeroIQ have never KNOWINGLY met or spoken to each other.
What needs to be “take[n] out” are: (1) the abuse of criminal courts to gain advantages in civil litigation; and (2) the brazen obstruction of justice by prosecutors and court personnel in a blind and rabid obsession to convict the innocent and prevent the wrongful convictions from being vacated.
Your insulting what I write as “trash” will not change the facts that I have transcripts of my own cases AND I have page citations from Becky Hill’s books. Nothing can change that.
What have I done to YOU for you to be so cruel to ME?
Still, it is Christmas, not Easter, season; but the best response to your cruelty to me comes from quoting John 18:22-24:
22When Jesus had said this, one of the officers standing nearby slapped Him in the face and said, “Is this how You answer the high priest?” 23Jesus replied, “If I said something wrong, testify as to what was wrong. But if I spoke correctly, why did you strike Me?” 24Then Annas sent Him, still bound, to Caiaphas the high priest .…
Just so you know, in case you have not read it elsewhere, I PERSONALLY know the VERY PEOPLE who railroaded Alex Murdaugh (“AM”) into two wrongful murder convictions because their friends (or payors) wanted AM’s Moselle because those people are obsessed with shooting beautiful living deer for the trophy of their horns and no trophy is ever enough for them.
I respect natural, reasonable, ecology-respecting hunting for food (though I never did it); but trophy-hunting and catch-and-release I loathe.
I know those people, Hatchet-for-Hire Heather, David Fernandez, Johnny James, John Meadors, and Donald Zelenka, and their assistants and collaborators because they tried, and are still trying, to bring false criminal charges against me to wrest from me a sliver of vacant land my mother and I unsuspectingly bought in March 2009 to build on it a completely solar house for ourselves. We bought it not knowing that the City of Columbia and the adjacent property owner had run illegally and surreptitiously run their sewer lines across and underneath that lot making it unbuildable.
When I sued for them to re-route the sewer lines away from my land (very feasible at minimal cost to them), they anawered by getting me falsely arrested and made homeless at Christmas time and at risk of homelessness ever since.
I wish the people who TRIED but, thank God, failed to railroad ME into two “harassment-in-the-first-degree” wrongful convictions with an evil plan to get me sentenced to 36 years, YES, THIRTY-SIX, by non other than Judge Clifton Newman would reimburse me and my family for our costs in exposing my evil prosecutors’/persecutors’ perjury, subornation of perjury, forgeries and fabrications against me.