COLLETON COUNTY, S.C. — The embattled Clerk of Court in the Alex Murdaugh murder trial has been accused of plagiarism by the co-author of her book.
Murdaugh was convicted in March of murdering his wife, Maggie, and son, Paul, at the family's Moselle hunting estate in rural South Carolina in 2020. He was sentenced to life in prison for the crimes.
According to an NBC News report, Neil Gordon said in a statement that Hill stole passages from the draft of a BBC news article about the case for the beginning of her book, "Behind the Doors of Justice: The Murdaugh Murders."
Gordon, co-author and journalist said that he noticed that a 12-page passage in the book's preface was lifted from a BBC article about the Murdaugh trial after reading an e-mail exchange between Hill and a journalist for BBC News. Gordon was given access to the emails, after a public records request from news outlets.
Hill's attorneys, Justin Bamberg and Will Lewis released a statement Tuesday, saying in part that she has accepted full responsibility for an unfortunate lapse in judgment.
Here is their full statement:
"Becky Hill is deeply remorseful regarding an allegation of plagiarism that has recently surfaced from her new book, Behind the Doors of Justice: The Murdaugh Murders. The pressures of developing additional content under tight time deadlines resulted in Ms. Hill taking material written by BBC reporter Holly Honderich and submitting it to her co-author Neil Gordon as if it were her own words. Ms. Hill accepts full responsibility for this unfortunate lapse in judgment and has personally reached out to Ms. Honderich to express her sincere apologies. The self-published book is only available online through Amazon and Audible and the decision has been made to unpublish the book for the foreseeable future until next steps for the book have been identified. Ms. Hill has great respect for the tireless work journalists do every day and sincerely regrets using Ms. Honderich's words as her own."
The book, which was available for purchase on Amazon and Audible, is ceasing publication.
Hill is already under scrutiny for accusations of jury tampering, leading to South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson asking SLED to investigate claims by Murdaugh's attorneys that Hill was speaking privately to jurors about the double murder trial.