7. June 2021: Lawyer Alex Murdaugh (54) has been visiting his Alzheimer’s-stricken mother and arrives at the family’s hunting lodge in South Carolina. Then he sees that both his wife Margaret (52) and son Paul (22) have been killed.
Both are shot.
– When I came in, I could see his brain open, Murdaugh told the police a few minutes later.
He breaks down in tears in the police car, while he tells what he has experienced. A policeman puts a comforting hand on his shoulder.
– Then I ran over to Maggie. Or, I think I tried to turn on Paul first.
He says he called 911 almost immediately. Murdaugh adds that he had also tried to reach his wife earlier in the evening, while at his mother’s house, but she did not answer.
PROMINENT FAMILY: The gate outside Alex Murdaugh’s home in Islandton photographed on September 20, 2021. The Murdaugh family has been prominent in the local community for three generations. Photo: Jeffrey Collins / AP / NTB
“What kind of relationship did you have?” asks a policeman.
– We had a wonderful marriage. A wonderful relationship.
He says that he tried to take the pulse of both. There was a lot of blood, but he saw nothing but Paul’s cell phone.
A policeman asked if the family had experienced any problems recently.
– Not that I know of, replies Murdaugh.
Shot in the head on the highway
Then he adds that his son Paul had been provoked and allegedly beaten down a few times, after he crashed the family’s boat while under the influence in 2019, in an accident that claimed the life of 19-year-old Mallory Beach.
THE MURDAUGH FAMILY: Buster, Maggie, Paul and Alex Murdaugh. Photo: Facebook
Just under three months later, Saturday 4 September 2021: Alex Murdaugh is driving along a highway in Hampton County in South Carolina when he notices that one of the tires is low on air. He stops the car.
A man arriving in a pickup truck stops and asks if he needs help. Then he shoots Murdaugh in the head.
The shot just grazes the head. He calls 911 for help.
A little later, his lawyer states that Murdaugh suffered a fractured skull from the gunshot.
The case was noticed across the United States.
A prominent lawyer from a prominent family in South Carolina, who had just lost both his wife and a son, was himself shot by a random person in traffic?
It’s startling to say the least.
However, his story quickly collapses.
Instead, an even more sensational story emerges.
Ordered murder – on himself
The police are tight-lipped about the motorway shooting, until just over a week later Alex Murdaugh is charged in the case himself. They believe he hired Curtis Edward Smith to kill him.
Murdaugh’s death will give his second son an insurance payout of ten million dollars.
BAIL HEARING: Alex Murdaugh in court on September 16, before being released on bail. Photo: Mic Smith / AP / NTB
Smith is also arrested. He immediately confesses that he agreed to help Murdaugh, but explains that he didn’t know what to help him with until he met him on the highway.
According to Smith, the shot went off while he was trying to stop Murdaugh from shooting himself. He also firmly believes that Murdaugh was not hit by the bullet.
“There was no blood on him and there was no blood on me,” says Smith The Today Show.
A spokesperson for the police says, according to the New York Times, that Murdaugh suffered a “superficial gunshot wound to the head”.
While the police work to prepare the charges against Murdaugh, he himself checks into a rehab clinic in Florida on September 6, because he suffers from drug addiction. In a press release, he says that he “has made choices he regrets”.
Murdaugh’s lawyers then contact the police to inform them that he will also confess to attempting to arrange an attempted murder.
They tell according to The Associated Press that Smith took advantage of his client’s mental illness and depression, after both his wife and son were killed and his father passed away from cancer the same week.
– He did not want the police to spend more time on this bogus crime instead of focusing on the murders of Maggie and Paul, says lawyer Dick Harpootlian.
Exposed thefts of millions
The New York Times quickly discovers that the attempt to arrange his own murder occurred the day after he lost his job at the law firm his great-grandfather had founded more than a hundred years earlier.
The management of the law firm had discovered that Murdaugh had stole several million dollars.
In October 2021, Alex Murdaugh is arrested at the rehab clinic in Florida.
REPRESENTING VICTIMS: Attorney Justin Bamberg is representing the family of Hakeem Pinckney, one of the victims that Alex Murdaugh allegedly defrauded out of compensation money. Photo: Jeffrey Collins / AP / NTB
Then he is also charged with having stolen insurance money from the children of his former housekeeper, Gloria Satterfield, who claimed over four million dollars in insurance after their mother died – allegedly from injuries she sustained after “falling over the dog” of the Murdaughs.
During her funeral in February 2018, Murdaugh is said to have persuaded the children to let him arrange the payment of the life insurance for their mother.
The insurance companies paid out over four million dollars, but Murdaugh allegedly told the children that the payout was only $500,000.
Nor did he send them a penny, according to the lawsuit the children filed.
The police decide to investigate her death as well.
Charged with double murder
Then comes the bomb on 15 July 2022: Alex Murdaugh is also charged with the murders of his wife Maggie and son Paul.
The police believe that he shot his wife with a rifle and his son with a shotgun.
– Alex wants his family, his friends and everyone to know that he had nothing to do with the murders of Maggie and Paul. He loved them more than anything in the world, his lawyers say in a press statement.
REACTING: Alex Murdaugh wipes away the tears that came when he saw his family in the courtroom on January 25. Photo: Grace Beahm Alford / AP / NTB
On 23 January this year, the trial against Alex Murdaugh began. He is accused of more than a hundred offences, and risks a minimum of 30 years in prison if he is found guilty of murder.
Police Officer Daniel Greene was the first to arrive at the hunting cabin, about 20 minutes after Murdaugh had called 911. According to Greene, the lawyer was upset, but did not have tears in his eyes and seemed abnormally interested in seeing what the police were doing at the scene.
Prosecutors have also said Murdaugh’s voice was heard in a cellphone video filmed less than five minutes before Paul Murdaugh’s phone is never used again. 30 seconds later, his wife Maggie’s phone is also never active again.
The police also believe that the ammunition used in the murders can be linked to ammunition that the police have found elsewhere in and around the hunting lodge.
For its part, the defense believes that the prosecutors have ignored all other suspects.
– We don’t know why. He doesn’t know why. But he has some theories, says the defender.
It is expected that the trial will last until at least 10 February.
