The court clerk whose tell-all book blew up the Murdaugh murder verdict

Hill was sitting in front of a stack of newly published book in which she described her role in the state trial of the century. An enthusiastic crowd spread out the door, onto East Washington Street and into a nearby alley. It was busy, but the one-time Miss Walterboro had a smile on everyone’s face and a charm.

Hill’s co-writer Neil Gordon recalled, “It was like his coronation.” “He was very proud of him.”

The book, “Behind the Doors of Justice: The Murdaugh Murders,” would soon lead to his downfall.

Its publication in August 2023 set in motion the events that recently led to the South Carolina Supreme Court overturn the conviction Alex Murdaugh, scion of a local legal dynasty, is accused of the murder of his wife and son.

The judges concluded that Hill, in his role as court clerk, had interfered with the jury in pursuit of fame and book sales. It called his actions “breathtaking and outrageous” and “unprecedented in South Carolina.”

Hill had previously pleaded guilty to misconduct in office, perjury and obstruction of justice and was forced from a job she loved. In an unexpected twist, Murdaugh – who is still expected to spend the rest of his life in prison on fraud charges – sued him in recent days for violating his civil rights. Now “innocent”, in the words of his lawyer, he wants to recoup some of the $600,000 spent on his legal defense.

Hill’s fall from grace is an unexpected postscript to an already baroque and moss-draped tale of murder and corruption in the rural Deep South. It also exemplifies the dangers of a small-town officer thrust into the spotlight by finding himself in the spotlight of a true-crime drama that becomes a national sensation.

“I don’t think she wanted to do it, but she did it,” said Annette Davis Bradley, owner of Downtown NV, an antiques shop a short distance from the Colleton County Courthouse, where Hill presided. Like many of Walterboro’s approximately 5,400 residents, she described Hill as a quintessential Southern belle – church-going, God-fearing and ready with a smile or an offer of sweet tea.

Davis-Bradley said, “She was a warm, friendly person. Everyone loved her.” But, she added: “I hate to know that this man is going to face another trial. And this is on him.”

Hill did not respond to requests for comment. When she pleaded guilty in December, she expressed remorse, saying, “There is no excuse for my mistakes. I am ashamed of them, and I will carry that shame with me for the rest of my life.”

Rebecca “Becky” Hill, now 58, grew up in Walterboro and won a local beauty pageant her senior year in high school. According to a 1985 article in The State newspaper, then aged 17, she performed Anne Murray’s song “You Needed Me” – in both singing and sign language – during a talent contest.

After college at the Salkehatchie campus of the University of South Carolina, he worked as a middle-school teacher before later becoming a court reporter. He impressed those who knew him as cheerful and determined.

In the South Carolina system, the clerk of the court – responsible for juries, organizing bailiffs and handling evidence – is an elected position. Besides the job itself, with a salary of around $100,000, part of the appeal is the right to hire others and therefore provide patronage in a small town. When the previous clerk announced plans to retire in 2020 after 20 years, Hill ran to replace him. Two years earlier, Hill had survived colorectal cancer. He won 56% of the vote in a contest that some locals described as essentially a popularity contest.

It is an accident of fate that the Murdoff trial comes before him. Murdaugh ruled in neighboring Hampton County. But Alex’s trial was held in Colleton because the bodies of his wife Maggie and young son Paul were found in a part of the vast family estate across the county line.

When Murdaugh was initially arrested for insurance fraud in September 2021, Hill had been on the job for only nine months. Soon the world’s media, true crime fans, and more will flock to his court.

The hill glowed.

By the time the trial arrived, “Miss Becky”, as many called her, had become indispensable to the visiting media, happily acceding to many of their demands inside and outside the courtroom. In a trial televised around the world, she became the pivot between the judge, celebrity lawyers, several journalists including The Wall Street Journal, television stars such as Nancy Grace, and local jurors.

She could do the favor. With a kind word to Hill, a visiting attorney who wanted to observe the proceedings could skip the line outside the courthouse that had begun to form in the dark of night and instead leave through a side door.

Kathleen Castle recalled how Hill found a place for her son Jake, then 20 and studying criminal justice, to attend the trial one day and then interview him for the class. Later, she took him to lunch. On the day of the judgment, he insisted that he sit in the front row. “She was nice to him and he didn’t have to be like that,” Castle said.

The verdict was delivered on March 2, 2023, after a six-week hearing, with Hill taking the lead role. As the clerk, he read aloud the jumble of docket numbers and announced the jury’s verdict to the world: guilty. For her performance, which lasted less than three minutes, Miss Becky wore two strands of pearls and matching earrings. During a press conference that evening, state Attorney General Alan Wilson praised “Becky Boo” for her extraordinary work. Hill then traveled to New York with a trio of jurors who would appear on the “Today” show. He later said, it was his first time traveling by plane.

Hill met Neil Gordon through his wife Melissa, a photographer, who spent a few weeks in Walterboro documenting the trial and the madness surrounding it. Soon after, Melissa Gordon messaged her new friend to wish him well and comfort. Melissa recalled, “She replied: No time for rest. I want to write a book.”

Augusta, Ga. “She realized that this was a moment that probably wouldn’t come again for so many reasons,” said Gordon, a former newscaster and publisher of the New York Times, who recently produced a documentary, “Trial Watchers,” about the phenomenon of true crime-obsessed women. He recalled Hill’s determination to make the book a success and how “she would love to buy a lake house.”

The turnaround happened quickly: Hill, he said, knew from his media contacts that Netflix was planning to release a Murdoff documentary in September. The two wanted to capitalize on the publicity by publishing “Behind the Doors of Justice” in August and did so.

The book reveals how Hill, like others in the Lowcountry, had a history with Murdaugh. “According to my family’s story, my grandfather and Alex’s grandfather, Buster Murdaugh, Jr., the county solicitor, were neighbors and ‘handshake business partners’ in a moonshine business in Hendersonville, South Carolina in the 1950s,” he wrote. “This is the same Randolph ‘Buster’ Murdaugh, Jr., who was prosecuting attorney for the Fourteenth Circuit of the Lowcountry from 1940 to 1986.”

According to Gordon, Hill told her how Alex Murdaugh once took her and her boss, the county judge, to dinner when she was a court reporter – an example of the county’s close, perhaps too close, relationships.

Even before “Behind the Door of Justice” arrived, trouble was brewing.

A month earlier, Laura Hayes, Hill’s former deputy and onetime friend, filed a complaint with the state Ethics Commission. “There are a number of things going on in the Colleton County Clerk of Court’s office that concern me,” he wrote, and then he alleged a series of financial irregularities – from extravagant meals on county money to Hill giving himself bonuses from a pot of money dedicated to child welfare services.

Hayes, who left his job, also noted how Hill had given the producers of the Netflix documentary access to the courthouse. “She allows them to come in and do whatever they want,” she wrote, noting the hours producers spent filming her boss. “Is it for personal gain?” he asked.

On social media – particularly on the “Walterboro Word of Mouth” Facebook page – Hill’s haters began to emerge, asking if she had grown too big for her friends.

Meanwhile, in the state capital of Columbia, the book comes to the attention of Alex Murdaugh’s courtly but foul-mouthed lawyer Dick Harpootlian. Harpootlian heard rumors that some jurors were unhappy with Hill’s conduct and began scouring the back roads of Colleton County to track him down.

He particularly recalled meeting a juror at the end of a dirt road. “She had a dog on a chain in front. It was a trailer. She was cooking collards for her grandson inside… I mean, it was something like ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ combined with Tennessee Williams,” Harpootlian said. “I mean, the whole scenario there is really bizarre.”

The woman, and then other jurors, described how “Miss Becky” had told them not to believe the defense, not to let him fool you, and to “watch Murdaugh’s body language” when he testified, he said.

During the evidentiary hearing in January 2024, nine jurors testified that they had not heard such a warning from Hill. Three others spoke, one of whom said it affected his judgment: “It felt like it made him feel like he was already guilty.” Murdaugh’s lawyers argue that Hill colluded to remove the juror—the so-called egg lady—because Hill feared she was unwilling to convict.

It would soon emerge that Hill had allowed members of the media into the courtroom after hours to show sealed evidence, including gruesome crime scene photographs of Maggie and Paul Murdaugh.

Meanwhile, Neil Gordon was exploring the problems “behind the doors of justice”. Thousands of Hall emails were disclosed by the State newspaper through a Freedom of Information request. He said that while reading them he discovered that the introduction to his book had been stolen from an article written by a BBC reporter.

“It was heartbreaking,” he recalled. “I never thought in a million years she’d be able to do that.”

“Behind the Doors of Justice” topped Amazon.com’s two thriller and true-crime categories for one day. Now Gordon races to “unpublish” it, promising that any sales from the remaining stock will be donated to charity.

Melissa Gordon struggles to reconcile the devout woman she thought she knew, with the details now emerging. He remembers Hill’s enthusiasm when he photographed Hill to promote the book. Miss Becky was wearing clothes and jewelry that Hill had borrowed from Dillard’s for the occasion. “He loved it,” she recalled. “He almost bought it all.”

Yet, despite all this, some Walterboro residents are refusing to join the mob that is now throwing rocks at a woman they have known since she was a girl. He argues that if he has made any mistakes, it must have been because outsiders took advantage of his kindness.

“Becky is just Becky. She’s as sweet as can be,” Teresa Busby said from behind the counter at the local hardware store. If this had not been such an extraordinary case, Busby said, no one would have cared or noticed Hall’s crimes. “But it was, and so she’s putting drugs in the mud.”

Write to Joshua Chaffin here joshua.chaffin@wsj.com