HAMPTON COUNTY, S.C. — On the morning a Colleton County grand jury indicted Alex Murdaugh for the shooting deaths of his wife and son, the graveyard where Maggie and Paul Murdaugh were buried stood empty of mourners, groundskeepers or any other human noise.
Floral bouquets, trinkets and flags dotted the well-groomed yard. As did the Murdaugh name, etched into grand headstones throughout the historic cemetery.
Randolph Murdaugh Sr. and Jr. are both buried at Hampton Cemetery, as is Randolph Murdaugh III, who died at 81, just days after Paul and Maggie were found shot to death at their estate. All three served at one point as solicitor of the 14th Judicial Circuit, a prominent and powerful legal position in South Carolina’s Lowcountry.
As a fourth-generation attorney in the dynastic Murdaugh family, Alex Murdaugh was trusted and well liked by many in Hampton, his hometown.
Thursday, he was charged with killing his wife and son.
As a saga involving murder, the theft of millions of dollars and a failed attempt to die by suicide has unfolded here, community members say their trust in storied institutions and the culture of their once-sleepy community has been irrevocably changed.
“The boat crash brought in state media people,” explained Michael DeWitt, a Hampton native and the longtime editor of the Hampton County Guardian newspaper.
He was referencing, the 2019 death of 19-year-old Mallory Beach after a boat crash involving Alex’s son, Paul Murdaugh, which quickly became a South Carolina scandal.
“Then the homicides and Labor Day weekend events made this an international thing,” DeWitt said, fast-forwarding to the onslaught of drama that exploded two years after Beach’s death.
In early June 2021, Alex called 911 to report his wife, Maggie, 52 and son Paul, 22 had been shot to death at their Colleton County property.
Two months later, in the first days of September, Alex Murdaugh called 911 to say he was shot in the head on the side of a rural Hampton County road. By November, he would be indicted for allegedly hiring a friend and relative named Curtis Smith to kill him so that his living son, Buster, could claim his $10 million life insurance policy.
National media descended upon Hampton, population roughly 2,500. DeWitt recalls state officials at the time saying they were fielding media requests from as far away as the United Kingdom. The Murdaugh murders had gone global.
“You’d never heard of Hampton until this,” said Angie Dempsey, manager at Hampton’s Nix Florist, around the corner from a picturesque Main Street.
Now, when someone hears where she’s from, they react with a shocked, “Oh, that’s where all the murders happened,” she saidThursday, the day the murder charges officially dropped.
Personally, she still struggles with Maggie and Paul’s deaths. Maggie was an occasional customer at Nix Florist. Dempsey never met Paul, but she knew people he knew.
“I can’t wrap my head around it,” she said. “I’m in total disbelief that you can take a gun and kill someone you profess to love.”
DeWitt said that has been a common reaction through his coverage of Murdaugh’s charges. People want to know why, he said. People want answers for Paul’s death in particular. It’s hard to imagine someone murdering their own child, DeWitt said.
He, too, has been stunned by the violence.
Thursday’s indictment spells out in clear letters how Murdaugh allegedly killed his wife and child: Maggie with a rifle, Paul with a shotgun.
“Seeing it in black and white is just so shocking,” DeWitt, who is working on a book about the Murdaugh dynasty, said.
‘We all still have more questions’
As the murders continue to thrust Hampton into the national spotlight, the community has become slightly more jaded about their outside reputation.
Dempsey remembers one day controversial TV news personality Nancy Grace came to town. Grace has famously offered commentary on high-profile court cases, like trials for O.J. Simpson and Casey Anthony. Others said they’ve seen more cameras and news crews in the last two years than in the 20 years prior.
Another resident, who declined to be named, said the Murdaugh murders are all any of her out-of-state friends want to talk about. When someone calls from her native Philadelphia, all they want to hear are updates about the case.
At first, no one wanted to talk about what had happened. The Murdaughs were a powerful and well-connected family. People were scared of retribution, Dempsey said. She thinks people are slowly becoming more willing to cross that line.
Still, even now as Alex Murdaugh sits incarcerated at the Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center in Columbia, most people in Hampton would rather not talk about it.
Nearly everyone The State encountered Thursday already knew about the indictment. Some said they’d been expecting it for months. Almost exclusively, they didn’t want to discuss the matter further.
One person, after emphatically denying a request to be interviewed on the record, explained no one wants to get wrapped up in the story because Alex Murdaugh still has a lot of friends in Hampton County — people he went to school with, relatives, or those he helped win thousands if not millions of dollars for through his legal work.
Another resident said there’s so much talk and speculation already, they didn’t want to add anymore.
Most people agreed the murders, and the financial crimes subsequently brought to light, have left Hampton County’s reputation tattered in the eyes of the nation.
And the impact transcends the Murdaugh legacy.
“A lot of other names got thrown into the light,” Dempsey said.
Those include ex-Beaufort attorney Cory Fleming and prominent Palmetto State Bank officer Russell Laffitte, who have both been charged with aiding in the theft of millions from Murdaugh and Flemming’s clients.
For some in Hampton, suspicion now shrouds most of the community’s storied institutions.
A former bank-turned museum houses relics of Hampton’s past, from 80-year-old banners announcing the famed Watermelon Festival, to porcelain dolls donated by longtime residents. A small filing cabinet with thin manila envelopes contains family histories of the prominent Hampton people.
Inside the Murdaugh folder are decades-old marriage announcement and death notices, and a handful of newspaper features on the Murdaugh legal dynasty. Accompanied by the folder is a large photo book exploring Hampton’s history.
Page 326 of “The Salkehatchie to the Savannah, a Visual Journey Through Hampton County,” recounts a history of Palmetto State Bank. On page 327, there follows a history of the Peters, Murdaugh, Parker, Eltzroth and Detrick law firm, which famed solicitor Randolph Murdaugh Sr. formed in 1910.
Even in the history books, the institutions are linked.
The law firm, which no longer includes the Murdaugh name, has condemned Alex Murdaugh’s alleged actions. Earlier this week when an indictment seemed certain, it issued a statement calling the news “sad and upsetting.”
“Our thoughts turn to Maggie and to Paul whom we loved and who we miss. Everyday we grieve for them. Justice must be served. If the charges reported today are true and just, we ask for our judicial system to act swiftly and to bring a conclusion to this heinous situation,” the statement, posted to the firm’s website, continued.
Still, the reputations of both the law firm and Palmetto State Bank stand on shaky ground.
“We’ve kind of lost faith in our systems here,” DeWitt said.
DeWitt explained that before the deaths and the arrests and the seemingly endless charges, people trusted Alex Murdaugh. They trusted Russell Laffitte.
Now, both DeWitt and Dempsey said, there are lingering suspicions that there’s more corruption still to be uncovered here.
And the actions of a few powerful men have done more than harm public trust. They have also wracked the reputation of a once quiet, small timber town whose previous claims to fame were as a Westinghouse hub and the hosts of an annual watermelon festival.
“The narrative on social media is we’re this corrupt, seedy little town with lots of dirty little secrets,” DeWitt said. “People don’t like that. They kind of take it personally.”
For some, the indictment may bring the beginning of closure. But for most in Hampton, the story isn’t over yet.
“We all still have more questions,” DeWitt said.
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