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ISLANDTON, SC – The unsolved murder of a mother and son. Millions of dollars in stolen funds. New investigations into a fatal boat accident and the fatal fall of a cleaning lady.
The mysteries surrounding a lawyer and his family in South Carolina have only become more tragic and confusing this summer, and with them have come two arrests, astonishing twists and complex theories – as many other parts of the case remain. unresolved. At the center is the Murdaugh family, whose members held powerful legal positions in the southern state 100 years ago.
It all started on June 7, when Alex Murdaugh, a lawyer whose father, grandfather and great-grandfather had all served as supreme prosecutors across much of the state, returned late one evening to home to reunite with his wife and one of their two sons. shot to death.
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Their murders remain unsolved, and things have only gotten more confusing since then. The initial investigation spawned several more deaths out of three previous deaths near the family, and Alex Murdaugh himself found himself handcuffed on September 16 after concocting a bizarre ploy to stage his own suicide to look like a murder.
Here is what you need to know.
What happened in the original “Murdaugh Murders”?
The fatal shooting of Murdaugh’s wife, Maggie, 52, and their son, Paul, a 22-year-old at the University of South Carolina, rocked the Lowcountry area of the state, where the family had established its legal dynasty. The murders began to be known as the Murdaugh murders.
Few details have been disclosed about the attack and no arrests have been made.
Murdaugh discovered their bodies when he returned to the family’s isolated home in Islandton, a rural hamlet about 65 miles west of Charleston.
In the audio of his 911 call, which he played just after 10 p.m., a distraught Murdaugh said he had returned home and found their bodies on the floor “in my kennel”.
“I’m up to it now, it’s bad,” Murdaugh told the dispatcher. He said neither his wife nor his son was breathing, and he pleaded with rescuers to hurry up. “Are they close, ma’am?
Agents from the Colleton County Sheriff’s Office wrote in reports that they had discovered several cartridge cases and called a tow truck company to the scene. They also said they searched neighboring homes and businesses for surveillance cameras, although heavily drafted police reports do not say if they found any.
How was Alex Murdaugh shot and why was he arrested?
Almost three months after the murder of his wife and son, Alex Murdaugh, 53, was forced to resign from his family law firm, PMPED – named after his partners’ initials – after the firm executives said Murdaugh had abused millions of dollars in customers. and firm money, which his lawyers have not denied.
The next day, September 4, Murdaugh called 911 and said he was shot in the head on a rural road not far from his home. He survived with only a minor injury and initially claimed he was shot by someone who stopped next to him while inspecting a flat tire on his car. But the story quickly fell apart.
Murdaugh quickly admitted that he actually paid a former client to shoot him in the head. Murdaugh’s attorneys said he hatched a plan to make his suicide look like murder because he falsely believed his life insurance plan would not cover his death if he was found to be dead. it was suicide. He had wanted to leave his eldest son, Buster, with a payment of $ 10 million.
Two days after the shooting, Murdaugh issued an apologetic statement to his “family, friends and colleagues” and said he was entering rehab. His lawyers said he had been addicted to oxycodone for years and that his painkiller abuse worsened after the deaths of his wife and son.
His plan to have his former client kill him resulted in the arrest of Murdaugh and former client, Curtis E. Smith, 61. Smith was charged with aggravated assault, assisting in a suicide attempt and insurance fraud.
Murdaugh surrendered to police on September 16 and was charged with insurance fraud, conspiracy to commit insurance fraud and filing a false police report, all felonies.
In a Hampton County courtroom, Murdaugh cried behind a face mask as he sat handcuffed and in a jail suit as one of his attorneys described his “fall from grace.” He was released from prison without having to give up money and returned to the rehabilitation center, which his lawyers said was in another state.
Murdaugh and his lawyers have firmly denied any involvement in the deaths of his wife and son.
“The only violence he has ever been involved in is this one, which consisted of being executed,” one of his lawyers, Dick Harpootlian, who is also a state senator, told the court.
What does this have to do with a boating accident?
At the time of his death, Paul Murdaugh, the son who was killed, was on bail after being charged in 2019 with crashing a drunken boat in an accident that killed one of his passengers , Mallory Beach, 19, and injured several others.
Documents and videos released since his death have raised questions as to whether the police were negligent or accorded him favorable treatment. One of the boat’s six passengers told a Natural Resources Department official shortly after the crash that Paul Murdaugh was operating the boat, but the officer wrote in a report that the passenger said he was not didn’t know who was driving.
The South Carolina Attorney General is still investigating the accident, in which Paul Murdaugh faced one charge of Under the Influence Causing Death and two Charges of Under the Influence Causing Serious Bodily Injury, all felonies. Authorities made no connection between the boat accident and the double murder.
In June, two of Alex Murdaugh’s brothers appeared on ABC’s “Good Morning America” and said in one of the family’s few public comments that their nephew, Paul, had received threatening messages ever since. ‘he had been indicted in the boat accident.
How did a housekeeper die at the Murdaugh’s house in 2018?
In February 2018, Gloria Satterfield, who had worked as a nanny and housekeeper for Alex Murdaugh and his family for more than 20 years, fell at their home and died of her injuries later that month.
The death was considered an accidental fall at the time, but on September 15, the coroner for Hampton County, South Carolina, wrote in a letter to state police that Satterfield’s death had not reported to the coroner and no autopsy had been performed. . Coroner Angela Topper said the death was listed as “natural” on Satterfield’s death certificate, which made no sense if it was an accidental fall.
That same week, Satterfield’s two sons said they never received any money from the $ 505,000 settlement their former lawyer reached with Murdaugh in a lawsuit over Satterfield’s death. This lawsuit had raised a demand for wrongful death but did not allege any criminality on the part of the Murdaughs. The sons, now represented by new lawyers, have filed a new lawsuit against Alex Murdaugh and their former lawyer, seeking transparency about where the money is going.
All of this has led the South Carolina law enforcement division, which is investigating the Murdaugh murders, to launch a new investigation into Satterfield’s death and payment for the settlement.
“I can’t remember a case that required more sun than this,” said Ronnie Richter, one of the new attorneys for the Satterfield sons. “Wherever it comes from, that’s a good thing.
And the young man found by the side of a road in 2015?
The governess’s death is not the only one to be re-examined.
In June, weeks after the deaths of Maggie and Paul Murdaugh, the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division announced that it was opening a new investigation into the death of Stephen Smith, a 19-year-old man found in a road about 10 miles from the Murdaugh house.
His death has never been fully explained and no arrests have been made. It was first investigated as a possible shootout, then was considered a hit and run. Police records suggest Smith ran out of gas by the side of the road several miles from where his body was found.
Police did not charge the Murdaugh family with wrongdoing in this case, and they did not say what, during their Murdaugh investigation, led them to open an investigation into Smith’s death.
“I have been waiting for this day for 2,174 days,” Smith’s mother Sandy Smith told FITSNews, an online outlet, in June after learning that state police would be examining her son’s death.
How powerful is the Murdaugh family?
The Murdaugh legal dynasty dates back to Randolph Murdaugh, who ran a one-man law firm before being elected, in 1920, as the first chief prosecutor for a five-county area that covers 3,200 square miles.
He held this position for two decades before being killed in a train crash. Then his son, Randolph “Buster” Murdaugh, Jr., took over the office, known as the 14th Circuit Solicitor office. Young Murdaugh held the post for 46 years, and when he retired his son Randolph Murdaugh III, father of Alex Murdaugh, was elected until 2006.
Alex Murdaugh never ran for the post of prosecutor, but he was a volunteer prosecutor and occasionally helped his father with business. He was officially dismissed from his volunteer post in September, The Island Packet newspaper reported.
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