Alex Murdaugh, the fourth-generation attorney whose family has long held power and influence in a rural swath of South Carolina, was charged Thursday with killing his wife and one of his sons at the family’s remote hunting estate in a mysterious murder that remained unsolved for over a year.
Murdaugh, 54, was charged with two counts of murder, with prosecutors saying he fatally shot his wife, Maggie Murdaugh, 52, with a rifle and his son Paul Murdaugh, 22, with a shotgun, on June 7, 2021. Alex Murdaugh had that shot. called 911 that evening from the family’s estate in Islandton, about 100 miles west of Charleston, saying he had returned home to find his wife and son dead near his dog kennel.
The South Carolina state police and attorney general, who are investigating the case, have not released any new details about the murders, which stunned the state’s legal community and caught the attention of amateur sleuths across the country.
Mr. Murdaugh’s lawyers said in a statement Thursday that Mr. Murdaugh was innocent of the crimes and loved his wife and son “more than anything in the world”.
“Alex wants his family, friends and everyone to know that he has nothing to do with the murders of Maggie and Paul,” the lawyers said. They said the police had tracked down Mr. Murdaugh early and that he had no motive to kill them.
Understand the ‘Murdaugh Murders’
A mystery from South Carolina. The unraveling of the life of Alex Murdaugh, a prominent lawyer, is at the center of a sprawling saga of mysterious deaths — including the murder of his wife and son — and allegations of multimillion-dollar defrauding. Here’s what you need to know about the case:
The murders were immediately scrutinized the Murdaugh family and the deaths of several people associated with themlike the rule of the family in the region† Mr. Murdaugh’s father, grandfather, and great-grandfather had each served as the chief prosecutor in a vast region on the southern side of the state known as the South Carolina Lowcountry.
Police began re-investigating the 2015 death of Stephen Smith, a 19-year-old man found along a road about 10 miles from Murdaugh’s home and believed to have been hit by a truck, as well as the death of Gloria Satterfield in 2018, a housekeeper who worked for the Murdaugh family and died after falling on the doorstep of their house† Police said last month they were planning to exhume Mrs Satterfield’s body. They have not accused anyone of misconduct on any of the dead.
The murders also put new focus on a deadly 2019 boat crash, one that prosecutors say took place while Paul Murdaugh was at the wheel. Prosecutors had charged Paul Murdaugh with drunk driving the boat into a bridge in 2019 that killed one of the several passengers, Mallory Beach, and he was still facing those charges when he was murdered.
Mrs. Beach’s family had sued Alex Murdaugh, arguing that he was partially guilty of the accident because he knew his son was drinking while he was a minor. At the time of the murders, Mrs. Beach’s family lawyer had urged a judge to force Alex Murdaugh to hand over documents about his financial situation.
Shortly after the 2021 murders, Alex Murdaugh’s life began to unravel further as those around him began accusing him of years of financial corruption. The law firm he worked for, which his great-grandfather founded more than a century ago, said in September that Mr. Murdaugh millions of dollars stolen from the company†
The day after he was forced to resign from the firm, police said he had asked one of his distant cousins to kill him by the roadside and fake the act as if it were a murder so that his other son, Buster, could kill him. collect on his life insurance policy. The plan backfired – Mr Murdaugh was apparently injured in the shooting but not seriously injured – and he and the nephew, Curtis Edward Smith, were charged with several crimes under the plan.
In the months that followed, Mr. Murdaugh… accused of a series of financial crimes, including $2.8 million in settlement funds that would go to Ms. Satterfield’s relatives in a culpable homicide lawsuit over her fall on Mr. Murdaugh’s property. He admitted last month that he owed her sons $4.3 million.
The fallout continued when two of Mr. Murdaugh’s associates — a lawyer and a former chief executive of a South Carolina bank — were killed. charged this year with several conspiracy and financial fraud offenses in what prosecutors described as schemes to embezzle money on behalf of Mr. Murdaugh. According to the South Carolina Attorney General, Mr. Murdaugh has been charged in total with fraudulently collecting approximately $8.5 million.
This month, Mr. Murdaugh and Mr. Smith, his distant cousin, has been charged with conspiracy to charge what prosecutors say was years of money laundering in connection with the distribution of oxycodone. Mr. Murdaugh said last year that he suffered from a drug addiction and that he enrolled in a drug rehab center in Florida, but that he arrested in the center in October for financial crimes with regard to the settlement funds in the case of Mrs Satterfield. He has been in prison in South Carolina ever since.
This week, shortly after news broke that he would likely be charged with the murder of his wife and son, the South Carolina Supreme Court ruled ordered that he be suspended based on his admission that he owed Mrs. Satterfield’s family money, stole from his law firm and attempted to fake his own murder.
The murders have brought massive attention to Hampton County, a rural area of approximately 18,000 people where the Murdaugh legal dynasty has been operating since 1910, and has become the subject of several true crime podcasts and documentaries in the making.
Chief Mark Keel of South Carolina’s Law Enforcement Division said in a statement Thursday that officers had remained focused on the investigation for the past 13 months and determined to identify an assailant.
“Today is another step in a long trial for justice for Maggie and Paul,” said Chief Keel.