Everything started when his younger son, Paul, was involved in a fatal boat crash in 2019. A year and a half later, Murdaugh’s wife, Margaret “Maggie” Murdaugh, 52, and Paul, 22, were found fatally shot on the family’s rural hunting estate.
To understand this complex story let’s go back in time to the history of The Murdaugh Family.
The Murdaugh Family
Since the 18th century, the Murdaugh family has been a wealthy American family residing in South Carolina’s Lowcountry. Between 1920 and 2006, the state’s 14th judicial district had three generations of elected prosecuting attorneys serving as circuit solicitors, a title that earned the five-county area the nickname “Murdaugh Country” due to the family’s prominence. The Parker Law Group was established in 1910 by Randolph Murdaugh Sr. in Hampton, South Carolina. The business focuses on personal injury lawsuits.
In 1986, Buster’s son Randolph Murdaugh III assumed the role of solicitor after him. He maintained office until retirement in 2006, running unopposed in every election. Three boys, Randolph IV (named Randy), Richard Alexander (called Alex, born May 27, 1968), and John Marvin, were among the four children of Randolph III and Elizabeth Alexander. Governor Henry McMaster presented Randolph III with the Order of the Palmetto in 2019, the highest civilian honour in South Carolina. On June 10, 2021, he passed away naturally. He had retired in 2006.
On May 27, 1968, Richard Alexander “Alex” Murdaugh was born. He earned degrees from USC’s School of Law in 1994 and from USC in 1990. Soon after, he became a part-time volunteer for PMPED, working as a solicitor for the 14th circuit. After marrying Margaret Kennedy Branstetter, often known as Maggie, Alex had two sons: Paul and Richard, also known as Buster. Margaret “Maggie” Kennedy Branstetter Murdaugh (1968–2021) was an American socialite from South Carolina who was Alex Murdaugh’s wife until her murder.
Alex and Maggie Murdaugh’s surviving son, Richard Alexander “Buster” Murdaugh, Jr., was born in 1996. Following in his father’s footsteps, he enrolled in the University of South Carolina School of Law after graduating from Wofford College in 2018. However, he was expelled for plagiarism during his first year of study. According to numerous reports, Alex tried to leverage the Murdaugh family’s resources and connections to get Buster accepted back into USC’s law school.
Paul Murdaugh was a University of South Carolina student and had a summer job working at his uncle John Marvin Murdaugh’s Kubota tractor dealership.
Deaths related to Murdaugh Family
The case of Stephen Smith
The Murdaughs, including Buster, were mentioned numerous times by witnesses and investigators as potentially being involved in the 2015 death of Stephen Smith, a nursing student at Orangeburg-Calhoun Technical College and former classmate of Buster’s who was found dead in the middle of a country road near the Murdaugh’s Moselle estate. This information can be found in the case file from the initial South Carolina Highway Patrol investigation into the incident. It was claimed that Buster and Smith, who was gay openly, were romantically involved. “These baseless rumours of my involvement with Stephen and his death are false,” Buster has stated on multiple occasions, rejecting any knowledge of Smith’s demise.
Death of Gloria Satterfield — The Housekeeper
Gloria Satterfield, who worked for the Murdaughs for almost 20 years, also passed away in a mysterious manner. When she died in 2018, it was first thought to be the result of a trip and fall that happened while she was working at the Murdaughs’ house. When a coroner discovered that the medical report indicated Gloria’s death was natural, the case was reopened because there was no longer a necessity for an autopsy. Gloria’s sons later sued Murdaugh after learning that Murdaugh had claimed nearly $500,000 for Gloria’s death. But there was nothing but silence at Gloria’s family’s gates. This fits with the financial crimes that Alex Murdaugh has committed in the past. As part of the reopened investigation, there were plans to exhume Gloria’s body to carry out a proper autopsy. In May 2022, Murdaugh made a settlement with Gloria’s family.
The Boat Accident — Mallory Beach’s death
A seventeen-foot-long fishing boat approached a small coastal inlet close to Beaufort, South Carolina, in the early hours of February 24, 2019. The passengers had been drinking all evening, it was foggy, and they were using their flashlights to navigate. When a bridge suddenly appeared in the darkness at roughly 2:30 a.m., the boat struck pilings and then ran up the closest bank, its hull smashed. Out of the six individuals on board, three were young adults who were tossed into the freezing water. Two reappeared, but the third, Mallory Beach, who was nineteen years old, was nowhere to be found. A week later, her body was discovered a few miles away in a marsh.
There was some uncertainty at first about who was steering the boat at the moment of impact, but it was known to be one of two young men, Connor and Paul. As per the testimony and interviews of Paul’s friends, who became surviving victims of the accident that took Mallory Beach’s life, Paul drove the boat that they were riding on into the Archers Creek bridge.
They had both had drinks, but the survivors said that Paul Murdaugh, who was nineteen years old, was the most drunk of the two. His friends called this angry alter ego of his “Timmy.” Later on in his testimony, one of the passengers stated, “Someone will say, ‘All right,’ when they see he’s drunk. Timmy is about to arrive. We must depart. Paul spent the majority of the evening at the helm of his family’s yacht. Though Paul had stood aside to quarrel with his girlfriend, eventually hitting her, his friend Connor Cook had sometimes taken over. Mallory’s friends — Miley, Morgan, Anthony, Connor, and Paul — all survived, but Mallory never made it out of the water. If the driver was judged to be at fault for the collision, there would be severe repercussions. But there was a significant disparity of power and privilege: Connor was a construction worker, and Paul was a Murdaugh.
Paul had organized an oyster roast, and the gang was returning from it. The next few evenings were spent looking for Mallory. However, the even more devastating fact surrounding this awful tragedy is that there was simultaneously another effort at rescue. Alex Murdaugh was making a valiant effort to keep his son’s name intact. While Anthony, Mallory’s boyfriend, remained at the scene to await the arrival of his girlfriend, the other members of the group saw Alex’s manipulation at work as he attempted to place the responsibility on Paul’s friend, Connor. Subsequently, Alex also made contact with Connor’s father in an attempt to intimidate him. Mallory Beach’s body was discovered eight days following the tragedy.
He was seen by many witnesses entering and exiting the rooms occupied by the survivors. An employee of the hospital overheard him telling Connor Cook not to speak up. Cook remembers Alex telling him in a subsequent deposition that “everything was going to be all right.” All I had to do was tell them I didn’t know who was driving while keeping my lips shut. But as the inquiry went on, Cook and his parents began to believe that the Murdaughs were attempting to place the blame on him — possibly with the help of the local police department.
Within weeks of the boat crash, Mallory Beach’s mother filed a civil lawsuit against the convenience store where Paul Murdaugh purchased alcohol the night of the crash and against Alex Murdaugh, who owned the boat, and his older brother, Buster Murdaugh, whose I.D. Paul Murdaugh used. Along with his parents who owned the boat, Buster was also implicated in the fatal 2019 boat crash because he had loaned his ID to younger brother Paul who was underage so he could illegally buy alcohol. In January 2023 Buster reached a settlement with accident victim Mallory Beach’s family and three other passengers involved in the fatal crash.
Concerning the boat crash, Paul Murdaugh was charged with several offences, including operating a boat while intoxicated. In all cases, he had entered a not-guilty plea; if found guilty, he could have spent up to 25 years in prison.
The Murder of Paul and Margaret
The Murdaughs were under investigation after Mallory Beach’s death, but a bigger tragedy was about to befall them. On June 7, 2021, Paul Murdaugh and his mother Maggie were brutally murdered outside the kennels at Moselle, the Murdaughs’ seventeen-hundred-acre hunting estate. As a result, Paul was unable to witness the opening day of the trial in connection with Mallory’s death. Alex was the one who called 911 just after ten o’clock to report the crime. He reported to the cops that he had just gotten home after going out most of the evening. Paul had twice been shot with a shotgun at close range. Maggie had been shot with an assault rifle more than once.
Alex stated over the phone that when he got home, he discovered his son’s and wife’s bodies. According to Alex’s testimony, he wasn’t there when the crime was committed. This was disproven, nevertheless, when a video discovered on Paul’s cell phone made it very evident that Alex had been with Maggie and Paul seconds before their murders. A backdrop video with Paul and Maggie’s voices included Alex’s.
Alex Murdaugh and his son Buster announced a $100,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of assailants involved in the murders of Maggie and Paul. “I want to thank everyone for the incredible love and support that we have received over the last few weeks,” Murdaugh said in a statement at the time. “Now is the time to bring justice for Maggie and Paul. Buster and I, along with Maggie’s mother, father and our entire family, ask that anyone with helpful information should immediately call the SLED tip line or Crime Stoppers.”
Aftermath and Trial
On September 4, 2021, in the middle of all of this chaos, Alex contacted 911 and reported that he had been shot in the head while changing a tire by the side of the road. While the fabrication was falling apart, the Murdaughs’ law firm — known by the unfortunate acronym PMPED— disclosed that he had been pushed out of the firm a day before the incident, for allegedly misappropriating funds. Soon later, a string of financial offences that Alex had committed also came to light, making his life more chaotic. Although he was found guilty of scamming people out of millions of dollars, his former law firm partners accused him of embezzling $9 million in funds. Alex frequently sued the insurance companies and then failed to give the money he received in financial settlements to the deceased person’s family.
Alex’s new attorney, Harpootlian, revealed in an interview with the “Today” show that his client was addicted to opioids and had spent a large amount of the pilfered money on drugs. In rehabilitation, Alex was asking for prayers and was filled with regret. Additionally, he had altered his story of the roadside incident. He now stated that distraught over the deaths of his wife and son, he had convinced Curtis (Eddie) Smith, a distant cousin who performed odd jobs for him, to shoot him dead and stage the crime so that Buster, his surviving son, would be eligible to receive payments from a ten-million-dollar life insurance policy. Eddie, the cousin, had done a terrible job.
Eddie and Alex were charged with attempted insurance fraud right away. But the image soon became hazy once more. Alex appeared for a bond hearing around two weeks after the event, with no sign of a head injury. Eddie, meanwhile, was denying everything. He told reporters, “If I had shot him, he would be dead.”
On September 16, 2021, At the Hampton County Detention Center, Murdaugh gave himself in. In addition to making a fraudulent police report, Murdaugh was accused of insurance fraud and conspiring to commit insurance fraud. On September 16, Curtis Edward Smith had his bond hearing before a Hampton County Judge. He consented to a public defender and had his bond set at $55,000 for Alex Murdaugh’s attempted assisted suicide.
After being released from a Florida rehab centre, Alex Murdaugh was arrested and charged with two felonies for obtaining property by false pretences, according to a statement from SLED. “These charges stem from an SLED investigation into misappropriated settlement funds in the death of Gloria Satterfield,” the SLED said in a statement. Alex Murdaugh was charged with nearly 50 financial crimes, and a court set his bond at $7 million. The state grand jury accused Murdaugh and Smith on two conspiracy counts, one of which involved Oxycodone-related substances. In July 2022, Alex Murdaugh was legally forbidden by the Supreme Court of South Carolina from practising law in the state due to his “admitted reprehensible misconduct.”
Due to the ongoing financial fraud that Alex Murdaugh had been committing for years, numerous charges were brought against him prior to the start of the murder trial on January 23, 2023. A grand jury indicted Alex Murdaugh on nine counts of tax evasion, alleging he failed to pay nearly $490,000 in state income taxes over nearly a decade. He now faces over 100 criminal charges. Alex acknowledged lying to the police about his whereabouts the night of the murder, but he denied being involved in the deaths. To support Alex’s claimed crimes, the prosecution has gathered witnesses and evidence, including bodycam video from the night of the killings. On February 21, Buster Murdaugh was called by the defence to discuss his father’s gentle treatment of his family.
Alex Murdaugh also took the stand in his own defence on February 23 and claimed that he did not shoot his wife and son. However, a jury took just three hours to convict him of both murders. He was sentenced to two consecutive life terms. On September 21, 2023, Murdaugh pled guilty to 22 counts of federal financial fraud and money laundering. He will be sentenced for those crimes at a later date. On November 28, 2023, Alex Murdaugh was sentenced to 27 years in prison for state financial crimes. Under the plea agreement, Murdaugh will be guaranteed to serve at least 85% — more than 22 years — of the sentence.
Media
The family and the criminal case against Alex Murdaugh have been the subject of several documentaries, docuseries, and podcasts. For a more detailed story of the case check out the Netflix documentary.
- Murdaugh Murders podcast (2021; Liz Farrell & Mandy Matney)
- The Murdaugh Dynasty (2022; Campfire Studios / HBO Max)
- The Murdaugh Murders: Deadly Dynasty (2022; Investigation Discovery)
- Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal (2023; Netflix)
References
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murdaugh_family
- https://abcnews.go.com/US/murdaugh-murders-mysteries-timeline-key-events-south-carolina/story?id=80041546
- https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/01/23/the-corrupt-world-behind-the-murdaugh-murders
- https://collider.com/murdaugh-murders-a-southern-scandal-true-story/
