The Murdaugh murder trial gripping America
The country is enthralled by the case of the wealthy South Carolina lawyer accused of killing his family.
It was the early hours of February 24, 2019, and a young college student lay in a hospital bed recovering from a boating accident that had just claimed the life of one of his friends.
Paul Murdaugh, the 19-year-old scion of a wealthy and hugely influential family in South Carolina, had been drunk and at the helm of the motorboat when it sped out of control.
Police had turned up to question him when his father, Alex, and grandfather, Randolph Murdaugh III, barged into the room unannounced. “I am his lawyer starting now,” Murdaugh Sr bluntly told the officer. “And he isn’t giving any statements.”
From that moment on, investigation into the incident dragged on largely out of public view.
The Murdaughs had been a potent legal dynasty in this part of the Carolina Lowcountry. Dating back to 1920, Randolph Murdaugh Sr was the first in three generations of solicitors for the 14th Judicial Circuit, which oversees prosecutions in five counties. His son, Randolph Murdaugh Jr, succeeded him for almost five decades. Randolph Murdaugh III then replaced him and served through until 2005. Alex, meanwhile, was a partner in a successful regional law firm and a respected legal mind.
But the death of teenager Mallory Beach that fateful winter night in 2019 began the unravelling of the wellcurated Murdaugh legacy – a spectacular downfall that culminated this week in Alex Murdaugh on trial for killing his wife, Maggie, and son, Paul, in a case that is gripping America.
Murdaugh, 54, is accused of fatally shooting Maggie, 52, five times with a rifle, and Paul twice, in June 2021 at the family’s remote hunting estate. Those who knew of the boating disaster initially assumed the double murder was vengeance – or preemptive justice – for Beach’s death. That was until a local media site reported that Alex himself was a person of interest.
A flame-haired Murdaugh shocked the courtroom on Thursday when he took to the stand in his own defence at the climax of the trial. He was innocent, he exclaimed to the court between sobs, “I didn’t shoot my wife or my son anytime. Ever.”
During the four-week trial, revelations emerged of other police investigations into Murdaugh, spanning murders, corruption, insurance fraud, theft of insurance payouts and drug-related charges.
Adding to the drama, a Netflix documentary – Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal – about the family, premiered this week on the eve of Murdaugh’s testimony. TV producers estimated accurately how the case would attract attention. The promotional blurb states: “Shocking tragedies shatter a tight-knit South Carolina community and expose the horrifying secrets of its most powerful family.”
Akim Anastopoulo, a Charleston lawyer and former prosecutor who has crossed paths with Murdaugh, says: “Around coffee shops and barber shops, that’s all people have been talking about. The new information that comes out – it’s amazing because everyone is living this in real time.”
In the documentary, friends describe a doting father who brought his children up in extraordinary privilege – from private planes and yachts to regular shoots and hunts on the vast 1,700-acre property.
Yet prosecutors have painted a different picture to the jury – one of a callous sociopath who struggled for decades with an opioid addiction and cared about money above all else. (According to phone records presented to the court, Murdaugh searched online for food at 10.40pm on the night of June 7 while he was still at the blood-soaked crime scene.)
The court heard yesterday how a month before the murder, Paul texted his father saying: “When you get here we have to talk. Mom found several bags of pills in your computer bag.” The prosecutor has portrayed this find as one part of a “perfect storm” that was closing in on Murdaugh.
A sense of mystery had enveloped the killings in the isolated corner of Colleton County as more than a year passed without a suspect or motive identified. Police were hindered, prosecutors say, by lies that Murdaugh admitted this week to telling about his movements on the night of the murders. He had been at home with his wife and son earlier in the day, but phone records indicate that he left to visit his sick mother around 9pm. He told 911 that he then returned home and found the bodies by some dog kennels. “I could see his brain laying on the sidewalk,” he said of Paul. “I didn’t know what to do.”
Lawyers for the state say that he killed them both before leaving, and then tried to create an alibi.
“Oh, what a tangled web we weave,” he said, tears streaming down his face in footage broadcast live on TV channels across the country. “Once I told a lie I had to keep lying.”
It is not unheard of for defendants in murder trials to testify, but it is a high-risk move that opens them up to a barrage of cross-examination from prosecutors. But Murdaugh spent decades representing clients in courtrooms like the one in which he now finds himself. Indeed, a portrait of his grandfather hung above the public gallery until a judge ordered it to be removed for the duration of the trial.
Prosecutors argued that Murdaugh – who had been accused of embezzling millions of dollars from clients – had hatched a bizarre plan to kill his family members to gain sympathy and to delay efforts to get him to divulge his personal financial information.
Days after the murders, they say, Murdaugh cashed a cheque to his personal account that had been made out to his legal firm. That finding led the firm to investigate further and, when they found evidence of financial wrongdoing, to ask for Murdaugh’s resignation, which he gave. He had been using the money to fund his drug habit, his lawyer claimed. Murdaugh was also the apparent victim of an attempted assassination while changing a flat tyre.
“The Murdaugh family has suffered through more than any one family could ever imagine,” a spokesman said as Murdaugh was examined in hospital. But that story began to unravel a week later when Murdaugh admitted to authorities that he had conspired with a former client – a man identified by police as Curtis Edward Smith – to kill him as part of an insurance fraud scheme.
Murdaugh had hoped his surviving son, Buster, could collect a $10million (£8million) life insurance payout, according to an affidavit to support charges against Smith. He wanted to end his life, but believed his policy had a suicide exclusion, said his attorney, who added that his client wanted to protect his only living child. Murdaugh would eventually turn himself in to the police and was charged with insurance fraud, conspiracy to commit insurance fraud and filing a false police report.
The scrutiny on Murdaugh spawned more investigations into at least two previous deaths in proximity to the family. As investigators probed the murders of Maggie and Paul Murdaugh, the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division said it was opening an investigation into the death of 19-year-old Stephen Smith, whose body was found on July 8 2015, on a rural road some eight miles west of the Murdaugh estate. Police said Smith, a classmate of Buster, was found with a massive head wound and they believed he had been struck by a vehicle. No suspect was ever charged and no connection to the Murdaugh family was revealed.
Three years later, Gloria Satterfield, who had worked as a nanny and housekeeper for the family for more than 20 years, fell at their home and died from her injuries several weeks later. Based on the Murdaugh account, the 57-year-old had tripped over their dogs and fallen down the front steps. But the coroner was not notified about her death and no autopsy was done. Her death is listed as “natural” on her death certificate – at odds with an accidental fall.
The state claims Murdaugh stole more than $4million in insurance money from the family. Police arrested Murdaugh, who at this time was receiving treatment at a drug detox centre in Florida, on charges stemming from a missing settlement fund. Murdaugh admitted that he owed Satterfield’s sons the full settlement plus lawyers’ fees – $4.3million in all.
Satterfield’s son Tony testified earlier this month in Murdaugh’s murder trial, saying the former lawyer had used his mother’s death to enrich himself by stealing millions that should have gone to her family.
Yesterday, Murdaugh returned to the stand for a brutal grilling from the prosecution. His legal team hoped his performance – which drew on decades of litigation experience – would cast enough doubt on the murders to exonerate him. The trial continues.