Infamous lawyer-turned-criminal Alex Murdaugh, age 55, has now spent almost as much air time on a Netflix docuseries as he did taking the stand for two days in his own defense during the spring double murder trial that left him a convicted family assassin. The first season of Netflix’s “The Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal,” introduced the world to the notorious Murdaugh family and the South Carolina Lowcountry, as well as set the stage for a southern gothic crime saga for the ages and one of the most closely-watched trials in the country.
At the case’s center is Alex Murdaugh, whose family dominated the legal landscape in the southern part of South Carolina for nearly a century. In March of 2023, a jury convicted him of murdering his wife and son in a failed attempt to conceal his own financial crimes. A judge sentenced him to two consecutive life sentences in prison.
This horrifying, bloody saga began on the night of June 7, 2021 when Mr. Murdaugh called 911 to report that his wife and one of their two sons had been shot to death on his isolated Moselle property in Islandton, a rural community just about sixty-five miles west of Charleston .The fatal shooting of his wife, Maggie, 52, and their son Paul, a 22-year-old junior at the University of South Carolina, rocked the state’s Lowcountry region, quickly becoming known as the “Murdaugh murders.”
Mr. Murdaugh had told the authorities that he discovered the two bodies near some dog kennels at the family’s estate. He had allegedly been at home with his wife and son earlier on the day that they died, but phone records indicate that he left to visit his mother around 9 o’clock that night. He has said that he then returned home and found the bodies. After law enforcement officers arrived, Mr. Murdaugh told them that his son Paul had been getting threats because of a fatal boat wreck he had been involved in a couple of years prior. Prosecutors have said that he killed Maggie and Paul before leaving, and then tried to create an alibi.
A sense of mystery enveloped the killings as more than a year passed without a suspect or motive identified until, in July 2022, Mr. Murdaugh was indicted on double murder charges in connection with the deaths of Maggie and Paul, authorities said, capping a long-winding mystery marked by a web of other questionable deaths that has yet to be fully untangled.
Mr. Murdaugh has also been charged with a wave of financial crimes in which prosecutors said he stole from clients, many of whom had been severely injured in car crashes and other accidents, and additionally siphoned money from his law firm. In total, state prosecutors have charged him with stealing about $8.8 million from a range of victims. While on the witness stand in his murder trial, Mr. Murdaugh admitted to stealing money and lying to his close friends and family, claiming that his severe addiction to painkillers fueled his behavior. He has however adamantly denied killing his family.
On Thursday September 21, 2023, Mr. Murdaugh pleaded guilty to twenty-two federal charges, including wire fraud and money laundering. He admitted to stealing large sums of money from former clients, and also agreed to be truthful with investigators and to take a polygraph exam if the government asked him to. “I want to take responsibility,” Murdaugh told The New York Times. “I want my son to see me take responsibility. It is my hope that by taking responsibility, that the people that I’ve hurt can begin to heal.” Murdaugh will stand for trial for an additional one hundred state crime charges in November of 2023.
