Alex Murdaugh appears with a shaved head in a new mugshot released just hours after he was sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison for murdering his son and wife.
The disgraced legal scion attorney was sentenced to two consecutive life terms on Friday in South Carolina’s Colleton County Court by Judge Clifton Newman.
Murdaugh will be held at the Kirkland Correctional Facility while the South Carolina Department of Corrections (SCDC) determines where he will serve time permanently.
In a mugshot released on the same day of his sentencing, the convicted family killer appeared with a shaved head and wearing a yellow prison jumpsuit. A source told Fox News that it is standard procedure to shave incoming inmates’ heads.
Murdaugh will spend the next 45 days at Kirkland, according to a statement by the SCDC. There, he will undergo medical tests, mental health and education assessments that will help officials assign a custody level.
He will then be sent to one of SCDC’s maximum-security prisons, like all new inmates serving life sentences.
Defence attorneys Jim Griffin and Dick Harpootlian said that they will be filing appeal documents within 10 days and vowed that they would appeal his conviction all the way up to the US Supreme Court.
Despite the verdict, Mr Harpootlian insisted Murdaugh is innocent and said that they had no regrets about putting him on the witness stand in his own defence.
The defence also said they did not regret having Murdaugh take the stand on his own defence as they had no other option because he “had been made out to be a monster who stole from children and crippled people,” by prosecutors.
Murdaugh confessed to stealing millions from clients at his law firm but largely blamed it on his opioid addiction. His legal team said on Friday that Judge Newman had taken an “erroneous decision” by allowing the jury to hear Murdaugh’s financial scandals.
The court was expecting to hear victim impact statements but prosecutor Mr Waters revealed that none of the victims wished to speak at this time. Mr Waters called Murdaugh a cunning manipulator and somebody who “placed himself above all others” and had violated the trust of his loved ones.
While he gave Murdaugh the chance to finally tell the truth once and for all, the judge admitted he “would not expect a confession of any kind”. The judge admonished Murdaugh for continuing with his lies in the courtroom – after he took the stand, changed his alibi and continued to deny killing his wife and son.
But the disgraced attorney and serial liar reiterated his statement of innocence.
“I’m innocent. I would never hurt my wife Maggie and I would never hurt my son PawPaw,” he told the court.
Prosecutors said that Murdaugh killed his wife and son to distract from his string of financial crimes – at a time when his multi-million-dollar fraud scheme was on the brink of being exposed. Jurors were told that on the day of the murders, Murdaugh was confronted by his law firm CFO about missing money that he had stolen.
Three days after the murders, a hearing was also slated to take place in a lawsuit over a fatal boat crash Paul was involved in.
Then, on 4 September 2021 – one day after he was ousted by his law firm for stealing funds – Murdaugh claimed he was the victim of a drive-by shooting.
He kept up the story for days, with jurors being shown a police sketch of an imaginary man he claimed ambushed him.
Days later, he confessed that he had orchestrated the plot claiming he had asked his alleged drug dealer and distant cousin Curtis Eddie Smith to shoot him in the head so his surviving son Buster would get a $12m life insurance windfall.
Murdaugh is now also facing around 100 charges over the multi-million-dollar fraud scheme and roadside shooting cases.
