by WILL FOLKS
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A sitting South Carolina legislator was arrested by state police this week on a gun charge – while a former state lawmaker pleaded guilty in federal court on fraud charges. After updating our audience on key developments in the cases of current representative Michael Frank Rivers and former representative Marvin Pendarvis, I welcomed research director Jenn Wood to the studio to discuss the ongoing controversy surrounding a horrific child fatality case out of Charleston County, South Carolina.
The tragic deaths of 2-year-old Emory Rose Deacon and fifteen-month-old Harlow Paige Deacon have shaken the Palmetto State to its core – with the girls’ mother, Justine Marie May, facing homicide by child abuse charges after the children were found dead in her care on September 29, 2026.
Could authorities have done more to protect these two little girls? That’s a question we explore in detail in this week’s episode.
Jenn and I also discussed an absolute avalanche of filings in the retrial of accused killer Alex Murdaugh, set to commence on April 5, 2027 in Sumter, S.C. Ever since we reported last month on the existence of a secretive grand jury investigation into a possible cover-up of the 2021 murder scene – this case has gone completely off the rails.
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With big battles looming over cell phones, DNA evidence and alleged ballistics inconsistencies, the existence of this newly uncovered grand jury probe – and a related state law enforcement division investigation – will likely take center stage next week as S.C. circuit court judge Debra McCaslin hosts an emergency hearing on the case.
Once again, thank you to everyone who watches and shares our show – and an especially big ‘thank you’ to each one of you who subscribes to our media outlet. Your subscriptions power everything we do at FITSNews: the lights, the camera, the accountability… all of it is thanks to your support.
If you value truth and accountability – please subscribe today! And if you’re already a subscriber, please consider gifting a subscription to a friend… or purchasing some of our cool merch!
Catch you next week…
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR…
Will Folks is the founding editor of the news outlet you are currently reading. Prior to founding FITSNews, he served as press secretary to the governor of South Carolina. He lives in the Midlands region of the state with his wife and eight children.
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4 comments
I left this comment on you Elena Moore story; but it is worth pasting here, too.
Jenn Wood’s summary of Lexington County Coroner Margaret Fisher’s press conference (which I watched in its entirety on WLTX-19) is impeccably accurate.
But both Ms. Fisher and Ms. Wood missed points which I have, qualifications, and a right and duty to highlight for everyone.
First and foremost, cardiac arrythmias DO KILL the apparently healthy young. Witness the young athletes and/or military recruits who sporadically succumb during training, games, or marching, specially in extreme heat. But that diagnoses is an electro-physiological, not anatomical, one and cannot be made with any certainty through an autopsy of a five-day-decayed body whose decay was accelerated by the extreme ambient heat. So, it would have been better to call it a diagnosis by exclusion rather than imply it was a definitive anatomical diagnosis.
Second and seriously, “get help” is bandied about by almost every Jill and Joe Schmo to basically anyone with whom they disagree. It is likely as frequent a proposed “solution” as “lock them up and throw away the key.” But no one asks “where?”
Long in-patient hospitalization of one patient means a bed unavailable for the next patient.
Long prison terms mean prison over-crowding, inability to recruit prison workers, and temptations of more criminality even by prison workers themselves.
So, what are the answers? First, admit that we have no guaranteed cures or even diagnosis for all mental illness any more than we have guaranteed early detection and cures for all cancers. Next, keep and publish good, politics-free, statistics. Third, think outside the box and propose biologically-plausible innovative solutions and test them rigorously.
More “mental health beds” cannot be simply bought in the mattress store.
They need more psychiatrists, psychologists, nurses, and other workers all the way to hospital orderlies. And where do you get those while ensuring they do not become mental health patients themselves?
Nor does merely throwing money or prisons at any problem solve anything.
Case in point: his mother is SUPER good looking (super-model Cindy Crawford) and his father is SUPER rich (Gerber empire heir Rande Gerber); but 27-year old model and athlete Presley Gerber died 20 September 2026 in a VERY expensive and exclusive rehabilitation facility. So, probably no body-shaming, bullying, etc. was involved.
So, what was probably involved? In my opinion free from false humility, moral vacuity.
Many young men would figuratively and/or literally have killed to have Presley Gerber’s looks and/or money; and many women would have done so to have Elena Katerina’s looks. But did either victim of self-harm/self-neglect have a moral core unimpregnable with belief in what Jesus Christ said in Matthew 6:25 and Luke 12:22-23?
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes?”
’22 Then Jesus said to his disciples: “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear. 23 For life is more than food, and the body more than clothes.[“]’
And a missed nugget in the news conference is Coroner Fisher’s revelation that completed suicides now exceed overdose deaths in the relatively-affluent Lexington County, South Carolina.
Again, PLEASE never demagogue or politicize human deaths which could have been prevented by moral clarity and true, innovative, science
If I may so myself, this is a VIC (very important comment):
The Prosecution does NOT want to test the male DNA in the swab from Maggie’s phone because it knows that, like the DNA from Maggie’s fingernails, it will EXCLUDE Alex because Alex NEVER had Maggie’s phone that night and was eager to help the responders on the scene find it the next morning.
Besides, Alex NEVER ever actually said “I was never at the kennels” or ANYTHING like that. TO THE CONTRARY, when Rogan Gibson told “Grandmar” (Maggie’s mother) that he heard Alex’s voice in the background of the phone conversation with Paul which preceded the unsent video, Alex WAS in the room with Rogan Gibson and Grandmar but did NOT “stand up and say no I wasn’t there.”
Here is the trial transcript, with page and line numbers, from the OFFICIAL Record on Appeal (RoA):
[RoA_2669, line 25] Q. 172. Is that another screen shot of your phone?
(R. GIBSON – DIRECT EXAMINATION BY MR. WATERS [Transcript page 1437 = RoA_2670])
[1] A. It is.
[2] Q. And are those other missed calls that came in?
[3] A. 10:25 p.m. and 10:30 p.m.
[4-6] Q. When you spoke to Special Agent Croft on June 8th of 2021, did you tell him and Special Agent McCallister who you thought you heard on that phone call at 8:40?
[7] A. I did.
[8] Q. And who did you say you heard?
[9] A. I thought it was Mr. Alex but I wasn’t exactly sure.
[10] Q. And did you give him a percentage?
[11] A. I did.
[12] Q. What did you say?
[13] A. 99 percent.
[14] Q. That you heard Mr. Alex on that phone call at 8:40.
[15] A. That’s correct.
[16-17] Q. As time went on after the murders, did you go to Moselle where all of the family and friends were gathering?
[18] A. I did.
[19] Q. Were you there a fair amount?
[20-21] A. Probably the whole part of that — or that — later that week.
[22-24] Q. While you were there at the house where the family and friends had gathered, did anyone ever ask you about your last contact with Paul?
[25] A. There was.
(R. GIBSON – DIRECT EXAMINATION BY MR. WATERS [RoA_2671 = 1438])
[1] Q. And who asked you?
[2] A. Grandmar.
[3] Q. And that would be Ms. Branstetter?
[4] A. That’s correct.
[5] Q. Maggie’s mother?
[6] A. That’s correct.
[7] Q. And what did you say?
[8-10] A. I told her, yeah, that I had talked to Paul about the dog. I told her that I heard Ms. Maggie in the background, and I heard a male voice that I thought was Mr. Alex.
[11] Q. Was he in the room then?
[12] A. Yes.
[13] Q. Did he stand up and say no, I wasn’t there?
[14] A. He didn’t.
[15-16] Q. Did you ever have any conversation with Alex Murdaugh about what happened that night?
[17] A. No, sir.
[18-19] Q. Did he ever ask you about whether or not you heard him on that phone that night?
[20] A. No, sir.
[21] Q. Did he ever tell you what he did that night?
[22] A. No, sir.
[23] Q. Did you ever ask him what he did that night?
[24] A. No, sir.
How darn prescient do I prove to be again and again.
Austin Levi Stanley’s 16 July 2025 deposition in the Hampton County case of Stanley v. Will Folks and FITSNews was recently posted on the Public Index of that case; and I managed to read it though it is filed only in the tedious-for-the-elderly-to-read condensed version of four pages in one.
That deposition is amazing in that Mr. Stanley answers circa 90% of the questions with “I don’t know,” “I can’t remember,” and/or variations of that answer.
The ONE question Mr. Stanley answers without hesitation and with an emphatic simple YES is: “Q. Okay. Are you trying to put FITSNews out of business?
Mark Tinsley, one of Becky Hill’s once (and still?) BFF, is Austin Stanley’s lawyer against Will Folks and FITSNews.
And since that deposition, Becky Hill pled to perjury; and Alex Murdaugh’s wrongful convictions, which Mark Tinsley and Ever-Bluffing-Eric-Bland (“EBEB”) were instrumental/indispensable in inciting and procuring, were reversed.
Several other curious things happened, among them EBEB’s book Anything But Bland was apparently withdrawn from publication and the complete SLED interview of Rogan Gibson was “bought” by a YouTuber called “Jailhouse Calls” and reposted under the previous link with the beginning half and the ending quarter deleted, leaving only the middle quarter.
And Mandy Matney was found in contempt of court despite EBEB defending her.
So, even if Will Folks and FITSNews did not win their motion for summary judgment against Austin Levi Stanley, the tide seems to be turning against the would-be Murdaugh-framers.
And since I, thank God, have a 100% record of correct inferences and predictions, I project that when that case goes to trial the jury will either straight-up rule against Austin or award him only one dollar in total damages.
Time shall, God willing, tell if FITS remains steadfast in the face of tigers, jackals, and vultures.
VIC, VIC, VIC:
What did Judge Debra McCaslin order just this morning?
Why aren’t you all asking for the clerk to scan the filings in Murdaugh’s criminal case to the public index as they do, or are supposed to do, in all civil circuit court cases?
The primitive technology it there. All they have to do is scan the papers in the same scanning machine they use for civil cases. And, of course in both civil and criminal cases, the judges retains the sound discretion to order a document sealed.
For ones clamoring for the release of the Ravanel-Dennis files (on which I have no opinion other than that my true church allows neither divorce nor extra-marital carnal knowledge), you are strangely silent on the PUBLIC Murdaugh filings not being immediately visible to the public.