Embattled legal scion Alex Murdaugh has been charged with the double murder of his wife and son, more than a year after their brutal slayings kicked off a dramatic fall from grace for the patriarch of a powerful South Carolina dynasty.
A Colleton County grand jury indicted Mr Murdaugh on Thursday morning for two counts of murder and two counts of possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime in the deaths of his wife Maggie and his son Paul back on 7 June 2021.
According to the indictments, Mr Murdaugh shot his wife dead with a rifle and killed his son Paul with a shotgun at the family’s sprawling estate in Islandton, South Carolina.
South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson and South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) Chief Mark Keel announced the charges, saying that it marked “one more step in a long process for justice for Maggie and Paul”.
Officials would not comment further on what evidence had finally led to the murder charges, 13 months on from the attacks, citing an active investigation.
However, sources close to the investigation said that blood spatter on the 53-year-old’s clothing as well as cellphone footage had placed Mr Murdaugh at the scene when his wife and son were shot dead.
The source told FITS News that the high velocity blood spatter on his clothing shows he was in close contact with at least one of the victims when they were shot.
Meanwhile, Paul’s cellphone – which was discovered near his body – contained audio and video footage of Mr Murdaugh speaking to his wife just before the time that he and his mother were killed, the source said.
This evidence contradicts Mr Murdaugh’s version of events as he claimed he returned home from visiting his elderly mother to find the bodies of his wife and son by the dog kennels on the grounds of the home before placing a dramatic 911 call.
Following his indictment, Mr Murdaugh’s attorneys Dick Harpootlian and Jim Griffin doubled down on their client’s innocence, saying that he loved Maggie and Paul “more than anything in the world”.
“Alex wants his family, friends and everyone to know that he did not have anything to do with the murders of Maggie and Paul. He loved them more than anything in the world,” they said in a statement to The Independent on Thursday.
“It was very clear from day one that law enforcement and the Attorney General prematurely concluded that Alex was responsible for the murder of his wife and son. But we know that Alex did not have any motive whatsoever to murder them.
“We are immediately filing a motion for a speedy trial, we are requesting that the Attorney General turn over all evidence within 30 days as required by law and we demand to have a trial within 60 days of receiving that evidence.”
Maggie Murdaugh, 52, and Paul Murdaugh, 22, were found dead from multiple gunshot wounds in a brutal double murder at the family’s hunting lodge back on 7 June 2021.
It was high-profile attorney Mr Murdaugh who claimed he discovered their bodies, placing a traumatic 911 call that night where he cried and sobbed down the phone.
Mr Murdaugh made the call at 10.07pm local time on the night of 7 June.
The coroner placed the time of death for the two victims between 9pm and 9.30pm.
In the audio, previously released by SLED, Mr Murdaugh is heard sobbing as he tells the dispatcher “it’s bad” and “my wife and child have been shot badly”.
When asked if his loved ones are breathing, he responds “no” and urges them to “please hurry”.
Mr Murdaugh also tells the dispatcher that he hasn’t seen anyone on the property.
For the last 13 months, no arrests have ever been made, no suspects named and no charges brought over their killings. Mr Murdaugh’s attorney previously admitted that the 53-year-old husband and father was a person of interest in their murders but insisted that his client was innocent.
Since their deaths, Mr Murdaugh has been arrested and charged over numerous other alleged schemes including embezzling millions of dollars to fund his opioid habit and a bizarre plot where he allegedly hired a hitman to kill him.
On Tuesday, the Murdaugh family were notified that Mr Murdaugh was going to be charged with Maggie and Paul’s murders and that new evidence would be presented to a grand jury on Thursday.
No motive has been given for the murders.
However, Mr Murdaugh’s finances were in secretly in tatters and Maggie was reportedly living apart from her husband at the time of her murder and had been speaking with divorce attorneys.
Paul, meanwhile, was awaiting trial on charges over the death of 19-year-old Mallory Beach in a 2019 boat crash. Paul was allegedly drunk driving a boat when he crashed it, throwing his friend Ms Beach to her death.
He was charged with boating under the influence and faced up to 25 years in prison. Rumours instantly swirled that the incident was in some way connected to Paul’s death.
Alex’s brother John Murdaugh – who previously spoke on Good Morning America protesting his brother’s innocence – said on Tuesday that “the entire family has been consistent that regardless of what goes on, we want the truth”.
The same day, Mr Murdaugh was also disbarred from practicing law in South Carolina by the state’s Supreme Court.
“Based on his admitted reprehensible misconduct, we hereby disbar respondent Richard Alexander Murdaugh from the practice of law in South Carolina,” the Supreme Court said in an order signed by all the court’s justices.
Mr Murdaugh has had a spectacular fall from grace over the last year and found himself at the centre of a twisted tale involving unsolved murders, millions of dollars of allegedly embezzled funds, a suicide-for-hire plot and several mysterious deaths that are now under investigation.
The dramatic step to charge him with his wife and son’s murders now marks the latest bombshell twist to the sprawling mystery.
Three months after his wife and son’s deaths, Mr Murdaugh allegedly hired a hitman to fake his own murder.
On 4 September, the attorney called 911 claiming he was ambushed in a drive-by shooting while he was changing a tire on the side of a road in Hampton County.
Mr Murdaugh was shot in the head and taken to hospital with superficial injuries.
One day after the shooting, Mr Murdaugh entered rehab for a 20-year opioid addiction and announced he had resigned from his law firm Peters, Murdaugh, Parker, Eltzroth, & Detrick (PMPED).
Days later, his law firm partners accused him of stealing millions of dollars from its clients going back years.
The partners had confronted Mr Murdaugh about the allegations and ousted him from the firm just one day before the shooting.
Mr Murdaugh’s version of events around the shooting rapidly fell apart and he confessed to police to paying an alleged hitman to shoot and kill him in an assisted suicide plot so that his surviving son Buster could get a $10m life insurance windfall.
Both Mr Murdaugh and his alleged accomplice Curtis Smith – who the attorney had previously represented – were charged over the incident.
Mr Murdaugh was released on bond on the promise that he enter rehab for his opioid addiction.
He was then arrested on his release from rehab in October on charges of stealing funds from the wrongful death settlement over the mysterious trip and fall death of the family’s longtime housekeeper Gloria Satterfield in 2018.
Mr Murdaugh is accused of siphoning off $3.4m of the $4m settlement meant for Satterfield’s sons to a fake company called Forge.
Questions have been swirling around Satterfield’s death ever since and investigators reopened a probe into her death.
Earlier this month, officials announced plans to exhume her body.
Satterfield worked for the influential Murdaugh family for more than 20 years when she was found at the bottom of some stairs at the family’s home. She died weeks later from her injuries.
At the time, her death was regarded as an accidental fall – though her death certificate cited her manner of death as “natural”.
Mr Murdaugh reached an agreement to pay her family $4m in a wrongful death settlement – money he is now accused of swindling from his insurance company to help fund his drug habit.
An investigation was also reopened into a third mystery death connected to the Murdaugh family.
Stephen Smith, 19, was found dead in a road from blunt force trauma to the head in 2015.
His death was officially ruled a hit-and-run but the victim’s family have long doubted this version of events and said that rumours swirled in the community that a “Murdaugh boy” may have been involved.
As well as the murder charges brought Thursday, Mr Murdaugh is already facing more than 84 ciminal charges from 16 indictments around the suicide-for-hire plot and schemes to defraud the Satterfield family and other victims out of millions of dollars. He is also facing 11 civil suits.
He is being held on $7m bond at Richland County’s Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center.
Throughout the legal saga, his surviving son Buster has stood by him.
In prison phone calls leaked last month, Mr Murdaugh is heard laughing to Buster that he has “allegedly done illegal things”.
Prior to the dramatic fall from grace, Mr Murdaugh was a powerful figure in Hampton County.
For almost a century, his family members have reigned over the local justice system with his father, grandfather and great-grandfather all serving as the solicitor in the 14th Judicial Circuit solicitor’s office.
