The Colleton County Courthouse was built in 1820
Ugh ... I bet some of you thought that the Pirate had left the chat. Permanently.
Not so fast! And not so fortunate.
Someday I will tell you about the past month in my life. But not today.
Today I want to tell you, as promised, about our family's trip to Hampton and Colleton Counties, South Carolina.
It's been a few weeks ago and these names may not sound as familiar to you today, as they would have then.
Newer, more gruesome and heartbreaking news stories have supplanted the horrors of the Murdaugh murder trial.
The kennels at Moselle. Click to embiggen.
Be that as it may, it occurred a scant two-hour drive from our doorstep, in the South Carolina Lowcountry, and thus generated more interest for me than it would have, had it taken place in a less familiar location.
It was our own homegrown Southern gothic murder mystery, that we've lived with since the news was broken that Margaret Branstetter "Maggie/Mags" Murdaugh, 52, and her son Paul Terry "Paul-Paul" (if you know, you know) Murdaugh, 22, were shot to death outside their hunting lodge's dog kennels on the hot, humid night of June 7, 2021.
In planning this excursion so as to stand in, and breathe the air of, the places where the drama unfolded -- both the crime and the world-famous trial -- I was reminded of a trip TG and I took to Fayetteville, North Carolina, in the summer of 1984.
I had read, in the previous year, Joe McGinniss's riveting true-crime classic Fatal Vision, and become fascinated by the crime.
Jeffrey MacDonald, convicted in August of 1979 of murdering his pregnant wife Colette and two small daughters during the cold, wet night and early morning of February 16-17, 1970, had by then been locked up for just shy of five years.
Audrey, the miscreant, after nearly getting thrown in the hoosegow
Due to the ineptitude of Fort Bragg military police, detectives, and prosecutors, he went free for nearly a decade after the murders.
At any rate, on an afternoon in June of 1984 (we were in Fayetteville for a wedding), TG and I sat in our car outside 544 Castle Drive, on Fort Bragg, facing the dwelling where the little family had lived right up until the end.
The windows and doors were boarded up; although the Army sent someone in to defrost the refrigerator (remember those days?) every couple of months, no one had ever lived there again.
Using my Kodak Instamatic I took a picture that, if I could find it, I'd show to you. But you can see one nearly identical to it in the link below.
The apartment-like housing unit is now gone, demolished in 2008.
The fancy entrance to Moselle
Fast forward nearly forty years to the hours just after the conviction and sentencing of Aleck/Alecks/Ellick Murdock/Murdaw/Murdah (if you know, you know) at the Colleton County Courthouse in Walterboro, South Carolina, and we were headed in that direction.
But first, Moselle.
If you watched and/or listened to Aleck/Alecks/Ellick's lying-dog testimony at his trial on February 23 and 24, 2023, you heard the recording on which he frantically told the 911 operator on the night of June 7, 2021 that the address where the first responders would find him (and the corpses of his wife and son) was 4147 Moselle Road.
That's located in the map dot of Islandton, South Carolina.
On the day of our trip in early March, a few days after the jury found Aleck/Alecks/Ellick guilty (they deliberated for less than two and a half hours) and Judge Clifton Newman sentenced him to two consecutive life sentences in a maximum-security prison, the weather was fine -- even going towards a little too warm.
Dagny in the gazebo at Hampton Cemetery
(We've had plenty of cold days since then. Then a few more hot ones. Tomorrow -- Saturday, the day before Easter -- is forecast to be cold, high of 50 if we're lucky, with a driving rain.)
(Easter Sunday will be cold too. I've had to tweak my Easter outfit to include hosiery, plus my Calvin Klein faux-fur jacket with elbow-length sleeves, worn with opera-length leather gloves, as it will be in the forties when we leave the house for church.)
(I'll have someone take a picture to show you.)
On this day we all headed for the Lowcountry -- all being TG and me, Audrey and Dagny, Chad, Erica (Cherica) Baby Rhett, and our friend Andrea from church (otherwise known as the usual suspects) -- in two white SUVs.
We like to keep it pure and simple.
Maggie Murdaugh is not buried here ... but you can leave flowers for her. Click to embiggen.
When we arrived at 4147 Moselle Road, which if you know, you know, has two entrances -- a fancy one leading to the house and a more utilitarian one leading to the kennels, lying perhaps forty yards apart -- we were not the first to arrive.
Several cars were parked on the side of the road -- both sides -- and maybe a half dozen folks besides us were milling about.
TG parked on the verge a respectful distance from either of the two driveways. Chad parked behind us. We all got out.
I had my Nikon DSLR with the zoom lens and I walked towards the kennel entrance, where there is an ordinary black plastic mailbox.
On the mailbox was a tired, dusty ribbon -- with streamers, like you'd put on a large present -- and a small black sign that said NO TRESPASSING in orange lettering.
Paul-Paul's passing is commemorated in the same way as his mother's. Click to embiggen.
I saw the sign and stopped several feet before the mailbox, and started snapping pictures. It's surprising how close those kennels are to that entrance. I was not trespassing. Three or four steps back and I would be in the road.
Audrey was pretty close behind me and she must not have seen the NO TRESPASSING sign because she kept walking, going a few steps past the mailbox. She was sort of mesmerized by her surroundings.
I was about to say something, tell her to come back, but I didn't have a chance.
IF YOU TAKE ONE MORE STEP I WILL ARREST YOU AND TAKE YOU TO JAIL!!!
This from a loud, angry, booming, rude, hateful male-type voice behind us, in the road.
Paul-Paul was planning to plant new sunflowers in the dove field at Moselle
I turned around. There in the road was a Colleton County Sheriff's Office vehicle.
The officer seated in said vehicle had directed his angry words at our Audrey.
I didn't see the officer's face but she later told me that he had red hair. A glut of gingers inhabit that part of the world, apparently.
Then:
EVERYBODY LEAVE THE PROPERTY. NOW!!!
We -- our party plus the other gawkers -- all walked back to our cars and drove away. Chad and Erica didn't get to see anything.
Maggie's and Paul-Paul's metal signs are easy to find because of this massive marble Murdaugh marker
I got a few pictures of the entrances, is all. But that's all I really wanted. Well -- I wanted to stand there beside the driveway for a few minutes, just taking in the vibe.
But we were not allowed to do that -- although again I stress, we were not trespassing. I don't care who you are or who your daddy or granddaddy was or how much money you've stolen or how many family members you've killed, you don't own the public road in front of your house.
The seventeen-hundred-acre property has been all but deserted since the night of the crime. In the weeks since the trial, it has been sold.
About a week after this incident, I wrote a nice letter to the Sheriff of Colleton County.
I politely pointed out that although my adult daughter had wandered a few steps beyond the small NO TRESPASSING sign (which she did not see, which I realize is no excuse, but still), she wasn't going to walk onto the property.
Dagny and Rhett: Cousins who love to be together anywhere, any time, anyplace
I said: All your officer had to do was get out of his car and say: Folks, I understand your curiosity but everyone needs to just move along. And that's all. Everyone would have moved along.
No need for belligerently bellowed threats delivered in an unchivalrous, downright churlish manner. No need for scorched earth.
I reminded him that one of the primary lawyers (either Jim Griffin for the defense or Creighton Waters for the prosecution; I can't remember which) whined near the end of the trial that on the previous weekend, people were crawling all over the kennels and even taking selfies in front of the feed room door where Paul-Paul's body was found.
Where were the angry, threatening police officers then? It was private property then too and those people were ACTUALLY trespassing.
I also pointed out that I thought it interesting that just after a trial during which it was revealed that for more than a century, the Murdock/Murdaw/Murdah clan have gotten away with everything from intimidation and illegal fixing to embezzling to drug addiction, to rape, to underage drinking resulting in deaths, to suspected murders and actual murders, with the full cooperation and collusion of local law enforcement, it was us they decided to threaten with jail.
Relics from the famous trial remained on the courthouse property
Yes! Ordinary hard-working, law-abiding, church-going taxpayers, longtime citizens of South Carolina, were threatened with jail for simply standing by the side of the road and walking a few steps past a mailbox.
Not members of the Lucky-Last-Name Club, though, who for decades have flouted the law with impunity.
I get it.
Sheriff Guerry L. "Buddy" Hill responded to my missive thusly:
Mrs. Weber, thank you for your email. I will certainly look into this as I do not tolerate our Deputies being rude or disrespectful to anyone.
Enough said.
Moving right along.
Walterboro has its charms
Our next stop was Hampton Cemetery, where Maggie and Paul-Paul are not actually buried (they were cremated and no one has told me who has the ashes but I would imagine it is Buster or perhaps Maggie's parents, Grandmawr and Papa T -- if you know, you know), but where there is a grave of sorts, beside the actual grave of Aleck/Alecks/Ellick's father, Randolph Murdaugh III, who passed away three days after the murders.
The cemetery is not all that large and we located the graves right away. We saw the fresh flowers that Buster Murdaugh, accompanied by his girlfriend Brooklynn White, left only a few days before, stalked by photographers all the while.
Buster was, I mean. Not us. In this instance we were not stalked by anyone. I was the only photographer on the day we went.
After spending several minutes there in that quiet and undisturbed but rather pitiful place (there are no grave markers but only the metal signs put there nearly two years ago by the funeral home), and paying our respects, we walked over to a gazebo and sat for a while.
Dagny wanted to pose beside the courthouse, amid the blooms
A gentleman who had been visiting a few graves and was leaving, struck up a conversation with me. Turns out that, like me, he is a taphophlle (one who enjoys wandering amongst the tombs). We had a lot in common.
TG talked to him for a while after I had gone on to take some pictures of Dagny and Rhett.
After we'd rested for a bit -- I must admit that our confrontation with the law had put a damper on our spirits and we were struggling to get back into the swing of things), we opted to drive the twenty minutes to Walterboro -- billed as The Front Porch of the Lowcountry. Their symbol is a red rocking chair.
The red rocking chair motif is ubiquitous
Once there, we parked and walked around the bridal-white antebellum Colleton County Courthouse. Crowd restraint barriers and orange cones were still positioned in its immediate proximity, relics of the just-concluded trial.
At the courthouse's back corner, on the street, there was a fountain where Baby Rhett, watched over by Chad, played and cooled his fingers.
We decided to walk east on East Washington Street towards the Walterboro Water Tower, one of only three standpipe water towers in South Carolina, which in years gone by doubled as a county jail. The sidewalks were deserted.
Can you imagine, looking at the pictures, being incarcerated in such a place as that stone tower, during a South Carolina summer?
After making the most of that, we walked some more and then decided it was time to eat.
Baby Rhett busied himself in the streams of cool water from the fountain. Click to embiggen.
A friend who lived for many years in Walterboro had recommended Castillo's for pizza. We were all excited. The children were starving.
Andrea warned that she was so hungry, she was fixing to eat her own skin.
We were seated in the decidedly plain establishment, and in due time a young man shuffled over and took our drink orders.
It took a pretty good while for those to be delivered to the table; they came in two distinctly separate batches, many minutes apart. There was no urgency whatsoever to get us served in a timely manner.
Until another couple came in and were seated, we were the only dine-in party. Pretty soon we figured out that Castillo's does the majority of its business in takeout orders. Diner-inners are an anomaly, and it would seem not a particularly welcome one.
The water tower juts skyward at the end of East Washington Street, amid a welter of wires
But we'd been assured that the pizza was stellar, so we settled in to wait. It was just a little after five.
A while later, the young man came back to take our orders. That was a process, since there were so many of us. I watched him, at the conclusion of the exchange, shuffle back to the far end of the restaurant where he stayed most of the time.
He did not veer over to the kitchen where we could see the pizza chefs preparing food. Our order ticket was still in his hand.
I watched carefully to see whether he input our order into a computer or something. He didn't.
Twenty minutes (at least) went by. We were getting antsy. Rhett was reacting. Dagny was deflated.
Imagine Audrey's face peering out from behind the bars
Somewhere in the world, as we cooled our heels on the linoleum floor of Castillo's in Walterboro, fortunes were made and squandered. Old dreams died and new were born.
Eventually the young man returned to our table. I just turned your order in, he announced.
I was agog. Just now? We ordered nearly a half hour ago! How long will it be before it's ready?
He was unfazed by my dismay. About twenty-five minutes or so, he said. It's all fresh ma --
I looked around the table. Erica was shaking her head no. Then she got up.
We can't wait that long, she said. Rhett had had enough of crackers from his diaper bag, washed down with water. He needed a hot meal.
No air conditioning ... just sit and swelter, and think about what you did to get there
We all got up. We went to the window where the chefs were visible, canceled our orders, and paid for our soft drinks.
As we were leaving, the young man hollered after us that there was a Domino's and a Little Caesar's nearby.
I said: But we were recommended to eat here, and we wanted to eat here, but we've been here an hour with no sign of food.
He just looked at me. No apology of any kind was offered.
We left.
And ended up at a Cracker Barrel, which was not only not what we wanted, but turned out to be only marginally better. To begin with, there was no jelly -- no jelly AT ALL -- to go on the biscuits.
It was five o'clock when we sought food but much, much later when we finally got some
I know. First-world problems. But still.
And I sat for fifteen minutes after everyone else had been served, waiting for my grilled chicken tenders with cole slaw and green beans.
When they arrived, I ate fast because I was the only one eating.
Overall the trip was, perhaps not an unmitigated disaster, but certainly not a resounding success.
However, we were all together on a beautiful day and we saw some things and gained perspective of a few other things, and made a few memories, albeit not all of them pleasant.
Spring blossoms were abundant at the Colleton County Courthouse
I can think of worse scenarios -- like, for example, being embroiled in the unfortunate family dynamics that resulted in the terrible tragedies that had brought us there in the first place.
Thanks be to God, I don't know what that is like.
Which brings us to this: I wish anyone who has dropped in, a happy and peaceful Easter holiday.
I think about you every day and wonder how you're doing. I'll be by soon to visit you.
And that is all for now.
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Happy Saturday :: Happy Easter
