Murdaugh was part of a powerful legal family whose grip over the Lowcountry region stretched back generations. It was ruthless, not afraid to abuse its power.
On July 14th, 2022, Murdaugh was arrested on a double murder charge for killing his wife and son. The gruesome deaths pulled the veil back on the family and exposed a justice system that turned a blind eye to its members’ felonies for years.
Who is Alex Murdaugh?
Alex Murdaugh is a South Carolina lawyer who was born on 17th June 1958. He is a member of the family firm Peters Murdaugh Parker Eltzroth and Detrick and has been working for them since he was young.
He is married to his wife Maggie Murdaugh and has a son named Paul. They live on Edisto Island in South Carolina, U.S.
Before his marriage, Alex was a lawyer for the law firm P.M.P.E.D., but he decided to leave the company when it uncovered a pattern of misappropriation in the company’s funds. He later traveled to Florida and checked himself into a drug rehab center before he was arrested on felony fraud charges in the Satterfield case.
According to court documents, Murdaugh arranged for his former client Curtis Smith to kill him on Sept. 14 so that his surviving son could get his father’s $10 million life insurance payout.
In addition to murder, Alex Murdaugh is charged with money laundering, stealing millions of dollars from his clients and the law firm, and tax evasion. He was held in jail without bail on those charges until he was arrested for a second time after authorities caught him in another case related to the death of a family housekeeper.
Family’s dog on video witness testifies
A new video presented by prosecutors Wednesday in the trial of disbarred attorney Alex Murdaugh compromises his alibi that he wasn’t at the scene of the killings of his wife and son. The footage allegedly shows a dog’s tail wagging, and voices from three people in the background — one of which prosecutors believe belongs to Murdaugh.
State prosecutors are alleging that the murders were carried out to gain sympathy ahead of an upcoming investigation into his financial problems. If convicted, Murdaugh faces 30 years to life in prison.
The trial is being held in Walterboro, South Carolina. It is set to begin Monday and will see a jury selected later this week.
During the first day of testimony Wednesday, several friends of the Murdaugh family testified about their relationship with Alex and his wife, Maggie, who was found fatally shot at their Moselle estate in June 2021. Paul’s best friend, Rogan Gibson, told the jury that he considers the Murdaugh family his second family.
Calls missing from the call log on Murdaugh’s phone
The trial of convicted murderer Alex Murdaugh was about to begin Wednesday, but the state had just presented a crucial piece of evidence. A cell phone that prosecutors say shows calls from May and June were missing, including the night of his wife and son’s murders.
Lt Britt Dove, who tested Murdaugh’s call logs in court, says that the gap between the last call on June 7 and the first call on July 5 indicates that someone intentionally deleted the calls from his phone.
He also said that the gap in the call logs can’t be explained by a device overwriting old data on the phone.
Griffin then asks Croft if he was told anything else during the August interview that might have made him doubt Murdaugh’s guilt. Croft said he had not.
He went on to question how many searches Murdaugh gave consent to after he was arrested. He was also asked about a search that yielded a 300 blackout clip found in a black Ford F-150.
Buster Murdaugh left and his girlfriend Brooklyn
Buster Murdaugh was the only son of former South Carolina attorney Alex Murdaugh, who has been indicted on multiple financial charges. He is accused of stealing millions from clients and his law firm, as well as defrauding the family of his longtime housekeeper of a $4.3 million insurance settlement after she died in a mysterious slip-and-fall accident at their home.
In a series of jailhouse calls, Alex Murdaugh fretted about his son’s future and tried to get him into law school. He told his son he loved him and was proud of him.
On another call, the incarcerated father asked his son to cut the lawn at their family’s Colleton County estate.
He said he wanted to make sure nothing was wrong with the property and that it looked okay.
He also mentioned that he was worried about his daughter’s relationship with her husband and their son.
He said he didn’t want them to be alone.
An Interview With Alex Murdaugh Is Being Compared
Murdaugh, the disgraced former Hampton attorney and a member of a prominent South Carolina legal family, is on trial for the murders of his wife and son. He has pleaded not guilty and faces life in prison without parole if found guilty.
In an interview played in court Monday, prosecutors revealed that Murdaugh appeared to break down weeping during a conversation with investigators three days after the killings of his wife and son. During one such moment, he uttered what appears to be the phrase “I did him so bad” in reference to his slain son.
During the interview, prosecutors played the recording of the June 10 police interrogation. At times, the audio was paused to give State Law Enforcement Division Senior Special Agent Jeff Croft time to emphasize Murdaugh’s comments or repeat key points for the jury.
The defense team cross-examined Croft to poke holes in the investigation. Specifically, they asked him why agents did not search Murdaugh’s ill mother’s home in the hours after the killings for bloody clothes or other evidence. They also wanted to know if Croft knew about a press release that was put out on June 8 that Alex Murdaugh was a suspect in the case.
A Mystery At The Alex Murdaugh Trial: Why Didn’t He Have Blood On Him?
There are a lot of mysteries swirling around the murder trial of Alex Murdaugh. A member of a family that dominated the legal landscape in South Carolina for decades, Murdaugh was accused of stealing from his clients and trying to stage his own suicide to conceal his financial misdealings.
Several investigations into two other deaths in close proximity to Murdaugh’s family have also come to light, including a mysterious death of their housekeeper and a fatal boating accident in 2019. The case has led to arrests, stunning twists and one of the most closely watched trials in America.
The trial is focusing on the murders of Maggie and Paul Murdaugh in June 2021, when their bodies were discovered at their hunting estate. The double homicide shocked the community and many people were left wondering how it happened.
The case has been a big part of South Carolina news since it began in October 2021. Prosecutors claim that Murdaugh had his former client shoot him and then file a false police report to get his $10 million life insurance policy paid out to his son. But Murdaugh’s defense team is arguing that he didn’t kill his wife and son. They say that cell phone data and video sent on Snapchat will show that he wasn’t the one to fire the shots that killed his wife and son.
Bodycam Video Shows Alex Murdaugh Brought Up His Son’s Boat Crash As Soon As Cops Arrived
The bodycam footage played in court last week showed Murdaugh wiped away tears as he stood near the scene of his slain wife and son. But that’s not the first time Murdaugh has been seen displaying an S-like appearance at a crime scene.
On Thursday, jurors listened to Alex’s panicked 911 call and watched the bodycam video from responding officers that captured him claiming he had been threatened for months because of a boat wreck his son was involved in two years earlier.
Colleton County sheriff’s deputy Daniel Greene testified that when he arrived at the scene, he saw Murdaugh talking on the phone, and standing close to the bodies of his wife and son with a shotgun leaned against his truck. But he said he could not see any blood on Murdaugh.
During cross examination, Harpootlian also questioned Greene about the tire tracks he spotted that appeared to be his. He argued that the investigator should have been careful to follow tire marks to prevent evidence from being contaminated.
A Snapchat Video From His Son Allegedly
Prosecutors in South Carolina have revealed that Paul Murdaugh, the heir apparent to the family fortune, sent a Snapchat video to his friends just minutes before he was shot and killed. His father, Alex Murdaugh, a scion of one of the state’s most famous legal families, will go on trial Monday in an affair that is expected to last for weeks.
According to court documents obtained by CNN affiliate WCSC, the video was part of a larger file retrieved from Snapchat after the company received a search warrant for data related to the murder of Margaret “Maggie” and her 22-year-old son Paul. In addition to the video, prosecutors have also reportedly subpoenaed Google for its data on location-related mobile devices at the scene of the crime. And a Snapchat representative has been ordered to testify in person, in order to wit a tidbit, the most believable of which is that the aforementioned video was sent from a device located on the murder scene itself, not just the home where the crime took place.