Thursday, September 28, 2023

The Cranky Yankee Returns: Dumb Blood

 Real Southern Noir - “The Way Down” and “Low Country: The Murdaugh Dynasty

The Way Down

This is a documentary about Gwen Shamblin, the Remnant Fellowship Church and the diet ministry The Weigh Down Workshop, centered in the upscale southern town of Brentwood, TN, just south of Nashville.  It might as well be a southern update of Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood or The Violent Bear It Away, Erkine Caldwell’s Journeyman or Sinclair Lewis’ Elmer Gantry.  What can a leftist take away from this train wreck, which actually ends in a deadly plane crash in a local lake?

Well, a number of things.  It is a harsh reflection on the evangelical Christian mindset, which, in an attempt to lose weight, does not rely on any scientific information but that received from a minister or the Bible. Sound familiar? Gwen Shamblin, a big-haired preacher that began to look like a weird waitress in a truck-stop, said that when you’re hungry, ‘think of God.’  Her weight-loss ministry, started in 1986, grew through trying to get the weight off of mostly working class southern women.  It shamed those who could not lose weight; it advocated starvation diets; it discouraged exercise or physical work; it blamed over-eating on ‘emotional issues;’ it thought weight-gain a ‘sin.’  Prayer and looking to God or Shamblin was the answer.  Buying the books, tapes and videos was another.  Escapees from the Weigh Down cult report mental health problems and eating disorders, though some also lost weight for a while. 

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Another relevant detail, familiar to anyone who pays attention to ‘pay to pray’ outfits like this is the wealth accumulated by the leadership.  The Remnant Church Fellowship was the parent of Weigh Down, and above that, many trusts that held the property of the Shamblin family.  She had over $20M in real estate property, including a $4M mansion near the church when she got divorced from her first husband – though divorce was not allowed in the church, except evidently to her. Her will included nothing for the church.  The cultural image of Remnant was of smiling, happy, upper-middle class families dressed in frilly and proper clothes, with their nice cars and big houses, having a marvelous time.  Like so many southerners who drink and party, Gwen did too.  It’s like some bad 1950s charade, with the women sometimes described as Stepford Wives. 

The cultish aspects continue:  the church practiced shunning of any who left, accusing them of being heretics.  It provided free lawyers during divorces to those remaining in the church for full child custody against the leaving parent.  It ran many businesses like car repair, building, real estate, child care and the like, much of it for low pay or no pay.  It did not pay members for work ‘during church hours,’ including the hairdresser who repeatedly did Gwen’s beehive.  Marriages were encouraged within the church and potential brides or grooms had to join if they wanted to marry a member. Members were forced to put in their wills that their children would be put ‘in the custody of the Church’ in the event of their untimely death.  It practiced ‘obedient children’ parenting doctrine – which led to the beating death of a parishioner’s 8 year old son in 2003 after he had been abused for years with Church approval.  Children were treasured as long as they were ‘perfect.’

Multi-Culty

The Shamblin ministry at one point in 2000 decided to distinguish itself from other evangelicals by getting rid of ‘The Trinity’ and only focusing on God.  Now the trinity of ‘Father, Son and Holy Spirit’ has never made sense to anyone except those drilled in fundamentalist Christian or Catholic doctrine.  Jettisoning Jesus reminds one of how some Southern Baptists now think Christ is too much of a liberal – too ‘woke.’  And who did God talk through?  The prophet Gwen Shamblin.  Most evangelical Christianity is male-based, so Shamblin was an exception, a weird form of conservative feminism.  She did urge her followers to be obedient to their husbands, which is the fundamentalist line.  That is why divorce was looked down upon except for her.  

That child’s death foretold what would happen to Gwen, her gold-digger husband Joe Lara, her son-in-law and 4 other top leaders in the Church when Joe’s jet went down in a lake east of Brentwood.  They all died.  They were headed to a 2021 MAGA event for Trump in Florida, which seems to be poetic justice.  Now you may think the accident was caused by low, thick clouds and Joe’s inadequate license and jet training and you’d be right, as he did not have a license to fly by instruments alone.  But when you’re an evangelical Christian, a magical thinker, you might blame it on God’s will.  Or to put it in the Hindu – karma. But the Church continues with Gwen’s pinch-faced, anemic daughter as one leader.  Because if there is anything else that is magical, it is that their own doctrine doesn’t apply to them.  It’s a cult for Chrissakes.  You’re in or you’re out.

(*Leftists stuck in these situations might want to change direction. Odd group think or fear of speaking out is a cult-like marker of a small group mentality.)

“The Low Country:  The Murdaugh Dynasty”

This is another southern noir documentary, set in the South Carolina ‘low country’ near the Atlantic, in a rural district with the small town of Hampton at its center. The town and high school are named after secessionist Wade Hampton - a planter’s son, Confederate cavalry general and segregationist Jim Crow senator. It was said that the Murdaugh clan, which had been the District Attorneys for 100 years in this area of 5 counties, were the local boss-hogs.  They dominated the biggest civil law firm and the criminal courts to boot.  They had long-time wealth, connections, influence with the police and courts, politicians and bankers - all the hall marks of power.  Grandpa ‘Big’ Buster Murdaugh was known to physically intimidate or ‘remove’ opponents back in the good ol’ days too.  So how did it all fall apart for these particular ‘good ‘ol boys’? 

Paul, Mom, Alex, Little Buddy of the Murdaughs

These rural counties are heavily class-stratified, not just between dark and light skinned, but within European-Americans, with the wealthy ones being popular in high school and powerful outside it.  A series of crimes showed this in spades.  We have a boating accident, killing one girl, in a speed-boat driven by a drunken, teenaged Paul Murdaugh.  A subsequent double-homicide of Paul and his mother at their family hunting lodge is ‘discovered’ by the husband, Alex.  Next, a suspicious drive-by shooting of Alex, who survived. Years earlier there was a body dump on a lonely rural road of a working-class gay teenager; and a suspicious fall of a Murdaugh housekeeper that led to a huge insurance payout.

Suspicions    

This family of hubris is surrounded by blood.  The documentary shows all the suspicious goings-on.  After the boat accident Paul’s father Alex and grandfather haunt the hospital telling the kids not to say anything.  The Murdaughs offer a lawyer friend of theirs to the family whose son they later accuse of really driving the boat. The boyfriend of the dead girl notes that on the bridge Paul said ‘he was sorry’ – Paul knew he'd been driving.  The judge allows Paul to get off without any jail or handcuffs, a small bond, the ability to travel and a case that never goes to trial.  A few months later Alex ‘finds’ his wife and son Paul dead at their lodge dog kennels and no suspects are found.  Alex is mysteriously injured a few months later in a drive-by shooting. 

Six years earlier a gay teenager, Stephen Smith, was found dead on a road with no physical evidence of a ‘hit and run.’  No car parts, skid marks, paint chips, glass, no physical damage except to the head.  His car was supposedly out of gas, but he had a cell phone and left his wallet in his car 3 miles away.  He’s found dumped on a road that does not lead to a gas station. The State Highway Patrol are barred from investigating the case by the Hampton County sheriff.  The Hampton County coroner confirms it’s a ‘hit and run’ because the body was on a road, and for no other reason.  Lawyer Randy Murdaugh offers the grieving family of the boy his legal assistance ‘for free.’  He’s usually a personal injury attorney, so the offer is odd. A Murdaugh investigator shows up to spy on the Highway Patrol as they comb the site for some sign of the non-existent accident.

Paul’s brother, little ‘Buster’ Murdaugh, becomes a suspect in the beating death of Smith after rumors fly around Hampton and witnesses won’t talk. It is possible that Buster had a sexual relationship with Smith.  Little Buster Murdaugh was never charged or interviewed by police according to the documentary and left town after the murder.

Investigators finally nail a suspect in the shooting of Alex Murdaugh.  He is actually a friend who was hired to wing Murdough for sympathy and to beef up the fiction about a vigilante killing his wife and son.  Alex then admits he’s been an opiod addict for 20 years, ‘quits’ his law firm for a time and goes into rehab.  His law firm had actually fired him for misappropriating funds.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

3 years prior to this the Murdough’s long-time housekeeper died on the front steps of their house due to a ‘fall,’ though Paul’s comments to the dispatcher on the phone were suspiciously defensive.  The housekeeper’s sons were promised support by the Murdaughs, again from one of Murdaugh’s lawyer friends.  A claim of $4.3M was made on the umbrella insurance policy over the death – but not a cent went to the two sons.  All the money was actually funneled back through a corporate shell to Alex Murdaugh himself.  Insurance fraud … and murder?  Later it came out he’d also been stealing from poor, black and injured clients and was hit with 70+ charges for stealing nearly $10M. 

Then there is the ‘big reveal’ which you’ve probably already guessed about the double homicide.  There are indications that his wife was contemplating divorce and divorce would entail a forensic financial inquiry into Alex’s assets – assets which have never been found.  The case continues.

You cannot make this stuff up, except in the corrupt, bloody, backward world of rural South Carolina.  I don’t think any rich, small-town ruling family in the North has this kind of record, anywhere, ever.

Prior blog reviews on this topic, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 16 year archive, using these terms:  “Florida Will Sink,” “A Minnesota Yankee in King Trump’s Court,” “Drivin’ Dixie Down,” “U.S. Army Bases Named After Confederates,” “Southern Cultural Nationalism and Southern Liberals,” “Monument,” “The Potlikker Papers,” “Cooltown,” “Monroeville, Alabama & To Kill a Mockingjay.”   

The Cranky Yankee

September 28, 2023

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