On 23 February 2019, 19-year-old Mallory Beach attended an oyster roast on an island in Beaufort County, South Carolina. She, her boyfriend, and a group of friends, arrived by boat on the Beaufort River. Among them was Paul Murdaugh, the 19-year-old heir of a prominent local family. The group left the party a few hours later, around midnight. Paul decided to stop at a bar on the way back, according to surviving members of the group interviewed in a new documentary. He ended up drunk, but insisted on driving the boat back himself.
“The way Paul was driving was honestly terrifying,” Morgan Doughty, Paul’s then-girlfriend, says in Netflix’s Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal, a three-part documentary premiering on Netflix on 22 February. On board with Paul were Morgan, Mallory, Mallory’s boyfriend Anthony Cook, Anthony’s cousin Connor Cook, and Connor’s girlfriend Miley Altman. When the boat crashed, only five people could be located: Paul, Morgan, Anthony, Connor, and Miley. Mallory was missing.
