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How Alex Murdaugh Went From Prominent South Carolina Lawyer To Double Murderer
ZUMA Press, Inc./Alamy Stock PhotoFormer attorney Alex Murdaugh has been convicted of numerous crimes, including the murders of his wife and son.
South Carolina lawyer Alex Murdaugh appeared to have it all. For generations, his family had held power in the Lowcountry as a prominent legal dynasty. He, his wife, and his two sons were local royalty.
Everything changed on June 7, 2021, when Murdaugh’s wife, Maggie, and younger son, Paul, were found shot to death at the family’s hunting estate. Murdaugh’s subsequent attempt at orchestrating his own murder to ensure his elder son, Buster, would be able to claim his $10 million life insurance policy only cast a greater spotlight on his family’s troubles. As it turned out, those troubles were part of a much larger web of dark secrets.
What began as a tragedy quickly spiraled into a captivating and disturbing exposé of greed, fraud, addiction, and murder that forever tarnished the Murdaugh name — a name now associated with scandal.
The Murdaugh Murders At Moselle
On the night of June 7, 2021, Alex Murdaugh dialed 911 in a panic, saying that he found the bodies of his wife Maggie and son Paul. They’d been shot to death near the family’s hunting estate, Moselle, in Islandton, South Carolina. The transcript of the call has Murdaugh describing the scene in grisly detail.
“She’s shot in the head, and he’s shot really bad,” Murdaugh tells the dispatcher. Then, the dispatcher asks Murdaugh where Paul was shot. Murdaugh replies, “Ma’am, I don’t know but he has blood everywhere… I see brain, I can see his brain.” He then describes Maggie’s condition: “She’s facedown. I tried to turn her a little bit, but she’s got a hole in her head.”
Maggie Murdaugh/FacebookThe Murdaugh family: Buster, Maggie, Paul, and Alex.
At the time of their murders, Maggie was 52 years old and Paul was just 22 years old. Paul had been shot twice at close range, and Maggie had been shot several times. Her body was a few yards away from Paul’s, but they were both found near the family’s dog kennels at Moselle.
Initially, Alex Murdaugh told investigators he had been visiting his mother, who suffered from dementia, when the killings occurred. However, his story soon began to unravel, as evidence showed he clearly overestimated the time he spent with his mother that night. Cell phone records, GPS data, and forensic evidence would eventually contradict his alibi.
But the real “smoking gun” in the case was a Snapchat video captured on Paul’s phone just minutes before the murders. This video happened to include Alex’s voice in the background. However, this crucial piece of evidence was only uncovered by police about a year and a half after the murders, as it took authorities a long time to unlock Paul’s phone.
The Snapchat video captured by Paul Murdaugh shortly before he was murdered.
But Alex Murdaugh’s story began falling apart long before the Snapchat video ever came to light. Investigators quickly noticed inconsistencies and contradictions in his story. For instance, he claimed that he had tried to revive his wife and son, but he had no blood on his own clothes or body.
Naturally, it wasn’t long before his name was in the headlines again.
Alex Murdaugh’s Staged Shooting Exposed A History Of Addiction — And Financial Crimes
On Sept. 4, 2021, Alex Murdaugh was shot in the head while he was changing a tire on his car on a rural road. He was supposed to die in the shooting.
Initially, he claimed the gunman was a stranger who drove a blue pickup. But he soon admitted he had orchestrated the incident himself, hiring a former client and alleged drug supplier, Curtis Edward Smith, to kill him so his surviving son, Buster, could collect on his $10 million life insurance policy.
Murdaugh believed that if he died by suicide, the policy would not pay out to Buster, which is why he tried to arrange his own murder. But ultimately, the bullet only grazed his head, leaving a superficial wound.
By September 6th, Murdaugh had publicly announced that he resigned from his law firm — Peters, Murdaugh, Parker, Eltzroth & Detrickhe — and that he planned to enter rehab because of his decades-long opioid addiction.
As he put it: “The murders of my wife and son have caused an incredibly difficult time in my life. I have made a lot of decisions that I truly regret. I’m resigning from my law firm and entering rehab after a long battle that has been exacerbated by these murders. I am immensely sorry to everyone I’ve hurt including my family, friends and colleagues.”
NetflixCurtis Edward Smith, the man who Murdaugh says assisted him in his failed suicide plot.
Soon after that, however, Murdaugh’s former law firm released a separate statement, alleging Murdaugh had been misusing the company’s money: “His resignation came after the discovery by PMPED that Alex misappropriated funds in violation of PMPED standards and policies. A forensic accounting firm will be retained to conduct a thorough investigation.”
On September 14th, Smith was charged with assisted suicide, insurance fraud, assault, and firearms offenses. As the shocking truth was revealed about Murdaugh’s failed suicide plot, his attorney Richard Harpootlian claimed that his client was driven to this desperate act by despair.
Harpootlian said Murdaugh’s attempted suicide was an “attempt on his part to do something to protect his child” amidst his worsening opioid addiction.
Murdaugh, meanwhile, turned himself in on September 16th and was charged with insurance fraud and filing a false police report. After he was granted bond, he was given permission to go back to rehab — after he surrendered his passport. As questions rose about Murdaugh’s bizarre, failed plan, questions also began to emerge about his misappropriated funds.
It was later found that misusing money was just the tip of the iceberg.
An Ominous Pattern Of Scandals, Greed, And Suspicious Deaths
NetflixBefore Paul Murdaugh was murdered by his father, he was involved in a boating incident in 2019, which led to the death of 19-year-old Mallory Beach. Paul, then also 19, was allegedly intoxicated when he accidentally crashed the boat.
A 2024 statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, District of South Carolina eventually revealed that Alex Murdaugh had been embroiled in multiple financial schemes dating back more than a decade. One wire fraud scheme beginning around July 2011 lasted until October 2021, and involved Murdaugh’s banker, Russell Laffitte, while a second scheme that ran from September 2005 to September 2021 saw Murdaugh obtaining money from his clients and his law firm by means of false pretenses.
He had also, from around February 2018 to October 2020, conspired with another attorney, Cory Fleming, to defraud the estate of his former housekeeper and his homeowner’s insurance carriers.
As investigators slowly uncovered this information, they came to realize that Murdaugh’s staged suicide attempt wasn’t an isolated misstep that came out of nowhere. Instead, he was seemingly trying to escape accountability for his involvement in financial crimes and other suspicious events.
One of the most infamous cases involved the death of the Murdaugh family’s longtime housekeeper, Gloria Satterfield, who died in February 2018 after a “trip and fall accident” at the Murdaugh home. No autopsy was conducted, and her death certificate listed the cause as “natural,” inconsistent with injuries that she would’ve sustained after tripping and falling.
After Satterfield’s death, Murdaugh recommended that her sons hire Fleming, so that they could bring a wrongful death claim against him and eventually collect money from his homeowner’s insurance policies.
Though Murdaugh’s insurance companies settled the estate’s claim for two payments, $505,000 and $3,800,000, Satterfield’s sons never saw any of the money. As it was later revealed, Murdaugh and Fleming were stealing it.
In the meantime, another mysterious case from 2015 also resurfaced during the investigation of Alex Murdaugh. This involved 19-year-old Stephen Smith, who was found dead on a rural road about 10 miles from the Murdaugh home. Initially ruled a hit-and-run — but with no suspects — the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) decided to reopen the investigation in the wake of the Murdaugh murders. Eventually, authorities revealed that Smith’s death may have been a homicide.
While the mystery of Smith’s death remains unsolved to this day, and the exact link between his demise and the Murdaugh family is unclear, the tragic loss continues to raise questions about just how influential the Murdaugh family had truly been — and what they were capable of.
Notably, the Murdaugh family was also entangled in serious legal trouble connected to Paul leading up to Paul’s murder. In February 2019, while allegedly drunk, a then 19-year-old Paul had accidentally crashed a family boat into a bridge, throwing many of his young passengers into the water. Tragically, this incident led to the death of 19-year-old Mallory Beach.
NetflixMallory Beach, the young victim of Paul Murdaugh’s boating accident, pictured with her boyfriend Anthony Cook.
By April 2019, Paul Murdaugh had been charged with three felony counts in connection with the deadly boat crash. He pleaded not guilty, but was awaiting trial regarding the incident at the time of his own death. Beach’s family eventually also sued Alex Murdaugh for Beach’s wrongful death.
Crucially, a lawyer for the Beach family was pushing for access to Alex Murdaugh’s financial records in the lead-up to Paul and Maggie’s murders.
As investigators uncovered the depth of Murdaugh’s financial crimes and the tangled web of lies and deception that had gone on for years, they seemed to find more and more victims who were taken advantage of by Murdaugh.
Many of his victims were vulnerable people who trusted him. In one case, he stole from a client who became a quadriplegic after a crash. In another, he took money meant for children whose parents died in a wreck.
By November 2023, Murdaugh had pleaded guilty to almost two dozen state financial charges against him, including money laundering, conspiracy, forgery, and tax evasion. He was sentenced to 27 years in prison for those crimes. Then, in April 2024, he was sentenced to 40 years behind bars for federal financial crimes, including wire fraud and bank fraud.
“Murdaugh’s victims turned to him when they were particularly vulnerable, after suffering serious injuries and losing loved ones,” said Adair F. Boroughs, U.S. Attorney for the District of South Carolina. “They put their trust in him as their lawyer, and he betrayed them. His crimes were cold, calculated, and brazen, and he earned every day of his 40-year sentence.”
Of course, Murdaugh was also found guilty of even more serious crimes.
Alex Murdaugh’s Murder Trial
NetflixAlex Murdaugh in court.
The murders of Maggie and Paul Murdaugh had been the inciting incident for a series of events that saw the gradual undoing of decades of prominence for the Murdaugh family. But even as Alex Murdaugh’s financial schemes started to come to light, the question still remained of what, exactly, had happened to his wife and son. Prosecutors had a compelling story: Alex Murdaugh had murdered Maggie and Paul to gain sympathy from the public, escape accountability, and buy time as his financial crimes emerged.
Murdaugh’s murder trial officially began in January 2023, with prosecutors presenting cellphone records, GPS data, and Murdaugh’s changing statements to investigators. The Snapchat video taken by Paul, revealed only in February 2023, became crucial to their case. If Alex had been home that night — in the very same area where Maggie and Paul were killed — why had he lied? More importantly, wouldn’t he have seen or heard something if there had indeed been another person there to kill them?
Despite the evidence against him, the Associated Press reported that Murdaugh denied guilt even at the very end of the trial.
Murdaugh said, “As I tell you again, I respect this court. But I am innocent. I would never under any circumstances hurt my wife Maggie and I would never under any circumstances hurt my son Paul-Paul.”
“And it might not have been you,” Circuit Court Judge Clifton Newman replied. “It might have been the monster you become.”
Defense Lawyers Continue To File Appeals And Demand A New Trial
With that, Alex Murdaugh was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences without parole in March 2023. But his lawyers argued, during the trial and afterward, that investigators had mishandled the crime scene, and that no direct physical evidence tied Murdaugh to the killings.
They continued to file appeals alleging jury tampering by Colleton County Clerk of Court Mary Rebecca “Becky” Hill. In January 2024, a judge denied the motion for a new trial, but as ABC News reported, Hill was eventually charged with misconduct and perjury, largely relating to a book about the trial that she had co-authored. The book also faced accusations of plagiarism, leading to it being pulled from publication.
ZUMA Press, Inc./Alamy Stock PhotoBuster Murdaugh in court during his father’s trial.
As recently as Sept. 10, 2025, Murdaugh’s lawyers are still asking for a new trial in the double murder. They continue to argue that police mishandled evidence in the case, and they’ve cited Hill’s apparent lack of credibility as additional support for their previous claims of jury tampering.
The state Supreme Court has yet to make a ruling on this new trial bid, but prosecutors made their own feelings known in a 181-page document that was filed a month earlier. The jury convicted Murdaugh “because he was obviously guilty, not because three jurors heard Becky Hill’s ‘foolish and fleeting’ comments about his upcoming testimony,” the prosecutors wrote.
For now, at least, Alex Murdaugh’s murder convictions remain intact. Considering that, and the many other crimes he was found guilty of, it’s likely that he’ll spend the rest of his life behind bars.
After reading about the crimes of Alex Murdaugh, learn about Robert Durst, the real estate heir linked to three murders. Then, go inside the controversial history of the Astor family, one of America’s most prominent dynasties.
The post How Alex Murdaugh Went From Prominent South Carolina Lawyer To Double Murderer appeared first on All That's Interesting.
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