SC car crash victim says she was unaware settlement money went to Alex Murdaugh, his family

Natarsha Thomas never knew she was missing money from an account managed by Russell Laffitte that ultimately went to Alex Murdaugh.

The young car crash victim said she was ecstatic to receive a check in 2011 for $83,000 from her settlement from a car crash two years earlier on Interstate 95 when a faulty tire on the Ford Explorer she was riding in blew out.

“I woke up crying” in a hospital room in Charleston with severe eye and facial injuries, Thomas told the jury in a Charleston courtroom Tuesday.

The then-19-year-old Thomas used her settlement to buy a car, she said. But Thomas said she never knew about a separate amount totaling $325,000 that was supposed to go into her account.

“I would have remembered that,” said Thomas, now 30, who lives in Yemassee in northern Beaufort County and is a full-time student studying to be certified nurse assistant.

As Thomas, the 13th witness in the prosecution’s ongoing federal bank and wire fraud case against Laffitte, spoke the 12-member jury panel and four alternatives listened intently as some took notes.

Instead, Laffitte, a former Palmetto State Bank executive who was acting as her conservator, sent that money to other accounts associated with Murdaugh, as well as other accounts he had previously taken money out of.

Bank records indicate Thomas’ money instead was used to pay back Hannah Plyler, another crash victim whose account was managed by Laffitte, in separate payments of $91,000 and $50,000. Prosecutors made the case Monday that those amounts had previously been removed from Plyler’s account without her knowledge to cover loans to Murdaugh.

Another $40,000 was sent to the account of Malik Williams, another account Laffitte oversaw and is accused of making unapproved withdrawals from.

Prosecutor Emily Limehouse broke down the payments to the jury, showing:

▪ $100,000 was given to Laffitte’s father, Charlie, who was CEO and chairman of the Palmetto State Bank board at the time

▪ $329,000 was given to Randolph Murdaugh III, Murdaugh’s father

▪ $10,000 was given to Maggie, Murdaugh’s wife

Asked why a 19-year-old adult needed a conservator to oversee her account, Thomas testified that she was unaware that Laffitte was her conservator, even when she later applied for a car loan from Laffitte at Palmetto State Bank.

Neither Laffitte nor Murdaugh, her attorney on the lawsuit over the car wreck, ever told her about the conservatorship, she testified.

Thomas was one of several people who allegedly had money stolen from their accounts by Laffitte, who was fired as the CEO of Palmetto State Bank in January.

After Thomas completed her testimony, her attorney, state Rep. Justin Bamberg, told The State newspaper that her testimony represented the clearest evidence yet introduced at the trial to show that Laffitte and Murdaugh were stealing from a person whose proceeds from a lawsuit were supposed to be placed in a conservatorship.

“Laffitte had absolutely no legal authority to do this,” Bamberg said. “He blatantly stole that $325,000.”

Testimony and records introduced at Laffitte’s trial have indicated that many of the numerous transfers to money that Laffitte made to Murdaugh’s checking accounts at Palmetto State Bank were made to cover the attorney’s overdrawn accounts.

Murdaugh now faces charges of various financial crimes as well as for the murders of his wife and son.

Murdaugh was fired from his law firm, now known as the Parker Law Group, in September 2021. Laffitte was fired from his CEO bank job in early January of this year after an internal investigation initiated by the bank board, which also hired Columbia attorney Greg Harris to look into Laffitte’s actions.