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When the grocery store butcher of Colleton County, South Carolina – who stands accused of slaughtering six people in the Green Pond Massacre earlier this year – appears in court this week, the hearing won’t be about the murder, weapons, arson or criminal sexual conduct charges he is facing. The singular issue to be decided is whether or not his jailhouse calls and written communications ought to be available to the media through public records requests.
The butcher, 34-year-old Ryan L. Manigo, is facing a total of 21 criminal charges related to a nightmarish series of events that transpired on July 2, 2023 when he allegedly entered a home at 779 Folly Creek Lane “under cover of darkness” – just before daybreak.
Family members were gathered at the home of 101-year-old Maggie Magwood to celebrate the holiday weekend. The lone surviving witness told authorities Manigo stabbed and killed five individuals – 49-year-old Jefferson Burnell, 73-year-old Amose Magwood, 7-year-old Shamiah Rutledge, 50-year-old Michelle Wright, and 11-year-old Sariyah Manigo – his own daughter. Magwood – the family matriarch – died of smoke inhalation after Manigo allegedly set her home on fire and left her to die inside.
A seventh victim survived the horrific attack by playing dead. This brave 13-year-old girl escaped after sustaining serious injuries which required her to be airlifted to a nearby hospital. The true hero of this story, she aided law enforcement at the scene – providing responding deputies with Manigo’s name as well as a description of him and the vehicle in which he was traveling.
She also gave them a chilling first-hand account of what transpired within the home.
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In addition to charges of murder, attempted murder, arson, burglary, and using a deadly weapon in the commission of a violent crime, Manigo is also charged with kidnapping, criminal sexual conduct, criminal sexual conduct with a minor and incest.
The allegations against Manigo are beyond disturbing – so reader discretion is advised. According to the arrest warrants (.pdf) obtained by this media outlet, after stabbing Burnell, Wright and Amose Magwood, Manigo “unlawfully seized and confined the juvenile and her juvenile cousin inside the residence, forcibly raping them both at knife point,” according to the warrants.
Next, he “set the house on fire and stabbed both juveniles multiple times, killing the juvenile cousin,” the warrants alleged.
As part of our ongoing investigation into this story, FITSNews requested audio recordings of Manigo’s jailhouse phone calls – a request which is on hold pending the judge’s decision.
Manigo’s attorney, Matthew Walker of the S.C. fourteenth circuit public defender’s office, filed a motion in August asking the court to limit the circumstances under which his client’s phone calls and written communications could be released to the media. The motion called for requesters to participate in a hearing with requests to be decided by the judge on a case-by-case basis.
“The Defendant objects to the release of any of his recorded communications being held by the Colleton County Detention Center without a hearing where the Defense, an agent of the Colleton County Detention Center, and the requestor can be present so that the Court can determine whether the release of any communications through FOIA is appropriate,” the motion (pdf) noted. “Accordingly, the Defense objects to the release of any communications of the Defendant without a hearing.”
But, Manigo isn’t in Colleton County.
(Click to view)
Since August 11, 2023 – two days after the motion was filed – Manigo has been held in nearby Clarendon County. Yet, the motion before the court is very specific as to the handling of media requests by Colleton County.
The issue of jailhouse calls came to the forefront last year after multiple media outlets obtained Alex Murdaugh‘s calls from the Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center. Murdaugh later filed a federal lawsuit against Richland County officials – whom he claimed violated his civil rights. Despite stated warnings on each call reminding him he was not entitled to an expectation of privacy, Murdaugh claimed the release of these recordings nonetheless violated his privacy and subjected him to ridicule.
The calls were later used in documentaries by Netflix and others, but it was their use in podcasts and other “electronic media” that was the focus of the lawsuit.
At the conclusion of his murder trial, Murdaugh was found guilty and moved to a state facility – making him ineligible to pursue the federal jailhouse call lawsuit against Richland County officials. A third party, Dr. Marie Assa’ad Faltas, stepped in as substitute plaintiff and appealed the case. Without Murdaugh as a defendant, though, the case has languished – failing to attract the attention of the public.
In her opening brief (.pdf) filed on October 2, 2023, Faltas said inmates have limited options for communicating with the outside world.
“Cell phones are contraband in jails; and SC short-term detention facilities do not issue tablets to their inmates or allow them to access email,” Faltas wrote. “The ‘choice’ is between monitored analogue phones or being isolated from the outside world. That is coercion, not consent.”
(Click to view)
Attorney-client communications are exempt from monitoring or disclosure. However, Colleton County accidentally released one call between Murdaugh and his attorney, Jim Griffin, in a batch of twenty-nine calls made during Murdaugh’s murder trial (most of them hangups) while Murdaugh was in the custody of the Colleton County Sheriff’s Department.
While the call was short and vague, Griffin posted on social media that he was “mad as hell” about it being released.
There’s no doubt that the phone calls released by Richland County provided insight into Murdaugh’s demeanor and pre-trial activities – as evidenced by their prevalence in pre-trial media coverage. Also, the release of the audio was done in accordance with the law.
As FITSNews previously reported, Manigo has a long violent criminal history – and one that has largely been ignored by prosecutors. While previous crimes could have kept Manigo incarcerated and in doing so made him unavailable to commit the crimes of July 2, 2023, overlooked infractions and lenient sentences put him out on the streets – where the butcher was ready and available to do much worse.
Does the butcher of Green Pond have the right to private communications from jail as he awaits trial? Is this a privilege that should be offered to him? Or does the release of personal phone calls somehow violate his rights?
A hearing has been scheduled in Colleton County on October 19, 2023 so a judge can decide the issue. FITSNews will be there to bring you the latest developments …
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR…
Callie Lyons is a relentless investigative journalist, researcher, and author known for exposing hard truths with heart and precision. As a journalist for FITSNews, she dives into high-profile and murky cases—like that of Mica Francis Miller— with fearless resolve and a sharp eye for detail, whether it’s tracking white-collar crime, uncovering religious abuse, or examining the often-bizarre behavior of those who believe they’re above the law.
Callie made waves with her groundbreaking 2007 book Stain-Resistant, Nonstick, Waterproof and Lethal, the first to reveal the dangers of forever chemicals, a story that helped inspire the film Dark Waters and influenced global scientific dialogue. Her work has appeared in numerous documentaries, including Toxic Soup, National Geographic’s Parched: Toxic Waters, and more recently Citizen Sleuth, which examines the complexities of true crime podcasting.
Whether she’s navigating environmental disasters or the darker corners of society, Lyons operates with one guiding belief: “Truth never damages a cause that is just.”
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4 comments
There needs to be consistency in how this is handled & enforced whether it’s Alex Murdaugh or this other heinous monster. Alex & his high powered attorneys & family have likely found a way around it (being monitored) by breaking even more laws.
I had no idea Ms. Lyons reported on my attempted intervention in the case; and what I wrote sounds better when selected and quoted by Ms. Lyons, whom I belatedly thank for the attention.
A correction, though: I was never actually granted the status of a substitute plaintiff. I was only a movant to become a substitute plaintiff.
As such my appeal could not have been from the decision to release the call but only from the decision to deny me substitute plaintiff status. Had I won that appeal and been granted substitute plaintiff status, I could then have argued in district court against the decision to release the calls.
There is a conflict of decisions which still remains to be resolved with the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts ruling that notice is not consent and an ancient case in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit vaguely equating notice with consent.
My focus was, and is, that release of calls from South Carolina county detention facilities is a question capable of repetition but evading review due to the theoretical short sojourn of inmates in those facilities. The inmates in such facilities are either: (1) pre-trial detainees denied bond (or before being granted bond) thus presumed innocent no matter horror of the allegations, or (2) serving short sentences upon conviction of petty crimes in municipal or county courts; and such sentences are typically not suspended pending appeal.
In reality, however, pre-trial detention may last years in South Carolina; and appeals of petty crime convictions DO occasionally get granted.
So, in my opinion free from false humility, the loss of privacy (not only of the inmate but of that inmate’s family and/or friends on the other end of the call) is too high a sacrifice for a presumed-innocent-later-proven-actually-innocent person to lay at the altar of freedom of the press.
And mistakes DO happen, as in the cited instance of a mistaken release of a call between Alex Murdaugh (who may yet turn out to have been mistakenly convicted in the ending of Paul’s and Maggie’s lives) and his lawyer, Jim Griffin.
Once lost, privacy cannot be regained. Freedom of the press should never be denied; but it can and should, under certain circumstances, be deferred.
“Open mic” my cute size 6.5 foot!
Not only did you refuse to let me paste here my recoil at your crowning Hatchet-for-Hire Heather (Weiss) “a competent prosecutor” and classing her among “some great lawyer” on your FITS Tube Week-in-Review, you deleted my comment from that broadcast.
I will not repeat my advice for you to go coercive-control yourself. I will advise to re-examine your conscience.
Really, one last attempt here. After this, other media outlets or maybe more principled propagandists, such as Wes Donahue:
There is no market place of ideas about perjury being a crime.
It is a crime for which, incidentally as early as the Hammurabi code and as late as the early 20th Century, the death penalty (which I oppose) was imposed.
Nor can there be a debate that a prosecutor who suborns perjury should be held to account.
Indeed, the U.S. Supreme Court has always recognized perjury and lies about facts as exceptions to the rights of free speech.
Yet, while claiming to fight for justice and accountability, not only to you glorify a perjury-suborning prosecutor, you refuse to run this comment of mine:
Will Folks, at 1:02:07, you crown Heather Weiss (“Hatchet-for-Hire Heather” in my book) “a competent prosecutor” and continue at 1:02:14 to class her among “some great lawyers,” after I repeatedly provided you transcript and record evidence that, for years, Weiss received from the City of Columbia $70K/year IN ADDITION TO HER SALARY as assistant to then-5th-Circuit-Solicitor Barney Giese, and to John Meadors after Barney Giese stepped down, SOLELY to bring criminal charges, justified or not, against the political or civil-litigation-adversaries of the City of Columbia itself or of its officials.
I now see clearly that in inability to advertise on your outlets, or even pay the monthly subscription to it, makes what Hatchet-for-Hire Heather did to me unworthy of you condemnation, or even investigation.
Just in case you forgot, that very Weiss had, in 2001 convicted one Corey/Cory Lamont Curry of possession with intent to distribute crack cocaine and got him sentenced to five years. In 2009, that very Curry returned to the vicinity of his 2001 PWID arrest, threatened to rape me, snatch my camera, and use it to photograph himself in the act of raping me, then stood in my parking lot publicly masturbating at me and later shooting me the bird with both his hands.
What did Hatchet-for-Hire Heather do about my photo-documented reports to law enforcement about Curry’s acts? Hatchet-for-Hire Heather had ME falsely arrested under FALSE PRETEXT that I harassed that supposedly-poor, hapless Curry by photographing him in the act of making lewd gestures at me.
Why did Hatchet-for-Hire do that? Because I was suing the City of Columbia to re-route sewer pipes improperly but clandestinely placed on a vacant lot of land Mother and I had purchased earlier that year unaware that the illegal sewer lines made it unbuildable until the sewer pipes were moved.
Did Hatchet-for-Hire stop at falsely arresting me? No, no, NO. When she found out that I will not knuckle under, she began scheming to cause my death in one of the most gruesome ways imaginable. She knew that in 1980 I had had thyroid surgery in Chapel Hill, NC, and that metal surgical staples were placed in my neck instead of absorbable surgical sutures to stop profuse bleeding. That was before MRIs were invented. Knowing that, Hatchet for Hire began pushing for a brain MRI as a condition of my bond. That, God forbade, would have cause the powerful magnetic field to violently pull the metal staples out of my neck and tear arteries, veins, nerves, and other structures in the process.
Did she stop after I bonded out and later, thank God and WITHOUT A LAWYER did for myself what Murdaugh’s team could not do for him: prevent a jury from returning a wrongful conviction? No, no, NO. Instead of dismissing the false case against me or giving me the speedy retrial for which I was pushing, Hatchet-for-Hire actually filed a motion to find me, ME, who dazzled judges with my brilliance, mentally incompetent to continue representing myself, and get this, because of the thyroid surgery I had in 1980.
That is all in OFFICIAL transcripts.
As is the fact that Heather Weiss LIED to Judge Clifton Newman about that Corey/Cory Curry’s criminal record after Weiss had listed Curry as one of her witness but declined to call him and I wanted him as a hostile witness in my defense.
Hatchet-for-Hire Heather Weiss suborned 365 perjuries from one of the false witnesses against me. Yet, not John Meadors, not Alan Wilson, not Clifton Newman, not John Kittredge, not anyone does anything about it after being provided with the annotated transcript OBJECTIVELY proving those perjuries and subornation.
Well, the other “great” lawyers Laurie Taylor and Shaun Kent are provided with a copy of this comment and that annotated transcript; and they owe it to their clients, if not to me or to the honor of the profession, to bring Heather Weiss’ past unethical conduct to light.