event. rob marciano and zohreen shah standing by. next, the clock ticking for the trump legal team. the special counsel requesting a protective order in the january 6th case. the judge wants a response within hours. it comes after the former president s threatening post, if you go after me, i m coming after you. and what he s now saying about the judge in the case. maryalice parks reports from the justice department. the horrific scene off italy s amalfi coast. an american executive killed when the boat she was on with her husband and children collided with a sailboat where passengers were celebrating a wedding. what we learned about the investigation. also tonight, u.s. navy destroyers dispatched off the coast of alaska after tracking russian and chinese war ships on patrol. the joint exercise raising alarm bells at the pentagon at a time of heightened tension with the two countries. new details in that alleged murder for hire scheme in the bahamas. an american mother of three
interview, them i said please describe to me so i know what kind of people they are. johnson has a one paragraph response, and what was interesting about the one paragraph response is that it was incredibly similar language to paragraph five of the journal. if i had any lingering doubts at that time, the she described john pittman the exact same way that dustin wehde describe john pitman, there is no doubt that she authored it. so if the journal was a fake, what does that mean? well, that is where the serpent bottom tale gets kind of simple. motive. the prosecutor says that tracy stage the home invasion to stage her acts and get an upper hand in the custody battle. here is what tracy is hoping. law enforcement s find the pink spiral notebook, they read it, and they think holy cow. it is going to raise enough suspicion that they re gonna spend all this time in energy to interview dr. pittman about this murder for hire scheme, and it is just enough for her to get it into the juvenile
ball pen sticking out of dustin s back pocket, the same type of pen made the journal. it makes no sense why dustin would go into a home invasion with a black roller ball pen in his pocket, it made more sense that the pink spiral notebook was done that day. the pink journal, written in dustin s chicken scratches, stated that john pitman had hired him to kill tracey. the prosecution had decided to clear that up once and for all. to do our ask dustin wehde to set up a plan to kill tracey richter or your son? god no. because the cops had long believed that doctor pittman was innocent of any murder for hire scheme, they kept the journal secret, thinking that anybody who knew about it was probably behind the moment vision plot. enter mary higgins, the prosecution star witness.
with this suicide for hire scheme and what more we re learning. this took place in september of 2021, so basically just three months after the murders, and we actually saw in court video from inside an ambulance for the first time in which alex had said he stopped to change a tire, somebody stopped to help him and shot him in the head. well, he changed his version of events really just a few days later. he told an investigator that he had asked his cousin eddie smith to shoot him in the head so his surviving son buster could cash in a $10 million life insurance policy. eddie smith says there was a struggle over a gun, he was trying to prevent murdaugh from shooting himself and the gun went off. i want everybody to listen to an exchange that was played between alex and the investigator. i told him that things was getting ready to get really bad and that i would be better off not here, and i asked him to shoot me. you asked him to shoot you? that s correct.
leave his surviving son buster with a life insurance payment in excess of $10 million. how would you describe your state of mind at that time. i was [inaudible] what does that mean? i thought it would be better for me not to be here anymore. what do you mean by not be here anymore ? i thought it would be make it easier on my family for me to be dead. murdaugh survived the september 2021 attack with minor injuries and authorities arrested the alleged gunman, curtis eddy smith a former client and distant relative of the defendant. the defense has tried to block the jury from hearing about the alleged suicide for hire scheme arguing it was unrelated to the fatal shootings of murdaugh s wife maggie and his younger son paul three months earlier. the judge initially agreed but then reversed his decision after during cross-examination the defense asked a witness about murdaugh s alleged drug payments to eddie smith.