COLUMBIA, S.C. — Alex Murdaugh’s voice rose as he talked to a family member about the remote control he had acquired for the television in the Richland County jail.
Murdaugh had been there about two weeks when he got to know a “one-legged” trusty, who made a deal with him for the remote. It was a precious possession for Murdaugh, a man looking for something to relieve the monotony.
“I can watch more than one channel,” Murdaugh said. ”Cost me a honey bun, three packs of Pop-Tarts, deck of cards and a bag of ramen noodle soup.”
That discussion with his son, Buster, is among more than 100 recordings of conversations the lawyer has had with friends and family since he was arrested last fall as part of a sensational case that has drawn international attention.
The recordings, made public recently after a federal judge declined to prevent Richland County from releasing them, provide rich detail on how Murdaugh has dealt with his time as a common prisoner, after a life as one of the most powerful and influential lawyers in Lowcountry South Carolina. With an income said to be more than $1 million a year, Murdaugh enjoyed trips abroad, ate in fine restaurants, vacationed in a family beach house and hunted on his 1,700-acre estate.
None of the recorded conversations provide any bombshell news about Murdaugh’s legal case, but they reveal nuggets of information about his troubles, as well as a plethora of details about his ups and downs at the Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center.
In discussions with friends and family, Murdaugh complained mightily about the jail food, explained how he dealt with unruly, out-of-control prisoners in his cell block, begged desperately for books to deal with the boredom, asked for money to buy items in the prison canteen, and relayed concerns that he had contracted COVID-19 from another prisoner.
Murdaugh said some prisoners wanted to “f--- with him.” Some wanted his legal advice. He talked about cleaning his cell, which he frequently called a “s---hole.”
At times, his voice shook as if he was crying, especially when he told Buster — his sole surviving child, since his wife Maggie and youngest son, Paul, were killed last June — how proud he is of him and offers fatherly advice.
Money was on his mind, from how to get houses and merchandise sold — before the courts step in because of lawsuits — to how Buster can get money so he won’t lose his apartment in Columbia.
Murdaugh’s telephone conversations provide insight on his relationship with Buster on a range of matters, including small issues, such as how Buster’s job is going, to larger ones, including how the younger man can be re-instated at the University of South Carolina law school.
Alex and Buster Murdaugh also discussed how to manage a trust account, as well as media coverage of the Murdaugh saga, according to the recorded conversations.
The calls released to The State cover a period from October to February. Above all, Alex Murdaugh hates being in jail.
“The worst thing is not doing anything, you know,’’ he said during a telephone conversation with one relative. “It’s like you’re rotting away.’’
A powerful legacy
Murdaugh, a 54-year-old former walk-on football player at South Carolina, has fallen hard since last fall’s arrest.
As a lawyer and legal legacy in Hampton County, he won millions of dollars in personal injury lawsuits in a community where his father, grandfather and great grandfather were powerful local prosecutors. His great-grandfather, Randolph Murdaugh Sr., started the family law firm in 1910.
Through the family’s work, the name Murdaugh came to mean wealth, courtroom success and political influence in the sparsely populated corner of South Carolina between Columbia and Hilton Head Island.
Alex Murdaugh made his fortune as a personal injury lawyer after graduating from the University of South Carolina law school in the class of 1994, a class that included a number of future judges, politicians and successful lawyers.
But the S.C. Attorney General’s office and lawsuits filed against him say Murdaugh had a dark side, and those troubles have kept him locked away at the Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center since Oct. 16.
He faces more than a dozen charges involving financial fraud and is a person of interest in the killing of his wife and younger son, 22-year-old Paul. Maggie and Paul were found shot at the family’s 1,700-acre estate in Colleton County. After their deaths, Alex Murdaugh was shot in the head by another person in a botched assisted suicide attempt, police said last fall.
But the criminal investigations and deaths that touch Murdaugh extend beyond the death of his son and wife.
In 2019, Paul was charged with boating under the influence and causing the death of 19-year-old Mallory Beach, which marked the beginning of the Murdaugh legal saga.
Two weeks after the killings of Maggie and Paul, state agents reopened the case of the 2015 death of Stephen Smith, whose body was found battered on a Hampton County road. Smith reportedly had ties to the Murdaugh family.
In fifteen criminal charges filed last year, state agents have alleged that Murdaugh defrauded clients, law partners and others of $8.4 million over the last 11 years.
Unable to pay a $7 million bail, Murdaugh has spent much of his time since last fall calling family members collect from jail to chat and to catch up on what’s happening in the outside world.
Football and the Grand Canyon
Jail recordings reveal that, during his months in Richland County, Murdaugh has called some family several times a day, asking about their activities.
Sometimes those family members were riding in cars. On more than a few occasions, he asked how South Carolina’s football team and others fared. He also asked about trips Buster had taken, including one to the Grand Canyon with an aunt and uncle.
On Jan. 2, in a call with Buster, Alex talked football. “What was the Georgia-Michigan score?”
“Like 27-3,” Buster replied. (Georgia defeated Michigan 34-11 on New Year’s Eve.)
“Georgia killed them,” Alex said.
Alex sometimes became circumspect when talking about the charges against him, reminding the people he’s called that they are being recorded and he knows “people are listening.”
In one call, Murdaugh told a woman that the unit where’s he’s housed was placed on lockdown in early December.
“I think that they’re understaffed,” Murdaugh said of the Richland County jail. “Fights and s--- go on.”
Murdaugh said he was being kept in a section of the jail for people held in long-term detention, with 55 other inmates where Murdaugh has his own individual cell.
In several calls, Murdaugh told people a story about a fellow inmate. A man on his cell block was “nuts” and acting out in his cell.
“He took off all his clothes and shoved them in the toilet so it overflows,” Murdaugh said on one call. When the water to the man’s cell was shut off, he broke off the sprinkler head in the cell to continue the flooding. The nude man then spread his own feces all over the cell window and walls.
“They hauled him out of here buck a-- naked,” Murdaugh said. But then Murdaugh and other inmates worked to clean up the water that flooded the area. “I just helped. It gives you something to do, or else you sit in your cell.”
Murdaugh, in one recording , recounted how he had been “mooned’’ by an irate fellow inmate.
“He told me to kiss his a--,’’ Murdaugh said.
There are indications on the calls that Murdaugh gets along with some of his fellow inmates. He described another inmate as “a real hard criminal, but he’s a really good guy. We really hit it off. He likes football, plays chess, he’s really intelligent and well-read.” And after many previous stints of incarceration, “he knows how to move and manipulate the system.”
Another friend, a man named Clarence, has been in jail for three-and-a-half years and works as a trusty, an inmate tasked with responsibilities around the detention center, despite having only one leg. Murdaugh told a person he spoke with that Clarence hands out meals and mops and sweeps the common areas, and has even helped Murdaugh get books he was looking for.
Some of Murdaugh’s fellow inmates have sought him out for legal advice, speaking to him through the vents in his cell. Murdaugh said he gets a lot of compliments and offers on his colorful shoes.
In other calls, Murdaugh described playing cards with his fellow inmates and making small bets of canteen items on football games. Even the man who wrecked his cell, Murdaugh recalled, was spoken to by one of the corrections officers, who said “your mom used to be a guard here, and she said to tell you to calm down and take your meds.”
“They never brought him any meds, and he’s obviously mentally ill,” Murdaugh said. “There’s a lot of that that goes on here, I feel sorry for a lot of these people.”
‘Miserable’ COVID outbreak
At other times, Murdaugh has seemed less comfortable in his new surroundings. In an October call, he described the unit being in lockdown for days because “Bloods and Crips kill each other.”
“God, I’m telling you I was a miserable man,” he said, adding that another inmate was “trying to f--- with me.”
“You can’t imagine the food in here,” Murdaugh said on one call. “Very little meat. No salt, no seasoning. All you can do is choke this s--- down. Lot of beans and carrots and s--- like that. Trying to do situps and pushups.”
Murdaugh revealed in the telephone conversations that he needs books to read to deal with the dullness of jail life. In some cases, he was unable to get them, according to the recordings. Among the books he asked to be sent were those written by John Grisham and Pat Conroy. Murdaugh said in one conversation he was “bored out of my head.’’
“Anything to kill the monotony,’’ he told a woman caller last November. “I read a book every day and a half’’ but he had run out.
In multiple telephone conversations, Alex Murdaugh expressed concerns about COVID-19 that he said had broken out at the Richland County detention center this past winter.
Murdaugh told people he spoke with by phone that the county detained a person with the ailment.
“We didn’t know the guy had COVID,’’ he said of the prisoner brought into his area of the jail.
Murdaugh said prisoners were eventually tested. He did not show signs of it by the time the test results came back. But he believes he had recovered by the time the test was taken, Murdaugh said on several calls.
“I’m convinced we had it in here,’’ he told one person he spoke with last winter. “Everybody in this pod had like a head cold that lasted for 2 or 3 days. But that was it. They put a dude in this pod who had COVID and didn’t tell anybody.’’
Father to son
Murdaugh remains close to his family, the recordings show.
One of his most frequent contacts is Buster. During their talks, Alex Murdaugh raised concern about Buster’s school, his work at a business and how he’s handling the horrific tragedies and struggles the family has faced in the past year.
“There’s a lot to worry about,” Murdaugh said when Buster told him he’s OK. “Putting so much on you. I wish there was something I could do about it now.”
Alex Murdaugh repeatedly told Buster he loved him and was proud of him. In one exchange between the two from early in 2022, the father expressed remorse after Buster said he could not afford to keep his apartment in Columbia.
“I’m sorry you are having to do that, Buster,’’ Alex said in a January conversation. “I’m sorry you are having to do everything you are having to do, bud. You are a good man. I’m proud of you.”
In a separate conversation, Alex Murdaugh said he would try to help his son keep the Columbia apartment. Although Alex Murdaugh is in jail and can’t make the more than $7 million bond, he said he could provide some money for the apartment.
“You let me know what funds you need and I’ll figure it out,’’ Alex Murdaugh told Buster.
Murdaugh also has tried to keep up with media coverage of his case, and at one point asked Buster about news stories of the death of the family’s former housekeeper, Gloria Satterfield.
State investigators announced two weeks ago that they are exhuming the body of Satterfield, who was said to have died of injuries in a 2019 fall at Murdaugh’s house. Murdaugh has been indicted on charges he engineered a scheme to collect $4.3 million in liability insurance proceeds that were supposed to go to the Satterfield family, The State has reported.
“Are they still trying to say out there, like there is some mystery surrounding Gloria’s death, about how she died?’’ Murdaugh asked his son, who said he did not know.
Murdaugh also asked his son about the death of 19-year-old Stephen Smith, whose body was found on a rural Hampton County road in 2015. The S.C. Law Enforcement Division (SLED) launched an investigation last year. Alex Murdaugh said there was no connection to the family.
“Did SLED ever come out and say there’s no connection?’’ Alex Murdaugh asked. Buster Murdaugh said no.
On other calls, Murdaugh said he was concerned about the family property, called Moselle, in Hampton County, telling Buster he’s worried about mold growing there and whether or not the ice maker is turned off or spewing water in the house.
He also worried about his wife Maggie’s belongings, telling Buster they “need to go deal with all mom’s stuff in storage.”
At one time, he suggested Buster make a hunting trip to the property, talking about the likely game to be found in the area. Buster said he did not want to go to the site of his mother’s and brother’s violent deaths.
Buster also complained that law enforcement has confiscated the family’s firearms and authorities are still holding the weapons.
“Did they run ballistics on them?” Murdaugh asked. “Were they used in the crime?”
They were not, Buster said. (The weapons used to kill Maggie and Paul — a shotgun and an assault rifle — have not been located, sources have told The State.)
On the afternoon of Dec. 30, Murdaugh reached Buster, who was leaving their 1,700-acre home in Colleton County. The home was now apparently deserted and was up for sale, with Alex Murdaugh in jail and Buster living elsewhere.
“What are you doing out there?” Alex asked.
“I come out here every so often to kind of grab stuff… make sure nothing’s been (messed) with,” said Buster.
Buster told Alex the place looks fine but the grass needs cutting, so Alex told him to hire somebody to cut the lawn.
At that, Buster exploded.
“With what? With what money? I damn sure can’t pay somebody to cut it with what I got on something so arbitrary as cutting grass … Money needs to be preserved — not to be spent on stupid s--- like that.”
Alex said “I think keeping it cut helps with the price you get.”
Alex Murdaugh also wanted to see that flowers put on the graves of his wife, son and father were done right, according to the recorded conversations.
“I just wanted to make sure,” Murdaugh said about the graves being adorned in a Nov. 22 call.
He spoke to a relative — a woman, likely his sister-in-law. Someone else had dressed the grave with “greenery, some berries . . . maybe even a wreath,” the woman on the other end of the phone said.
“Bless her heart for thinking about it,” Murdaugh said. “I just don’t know that she would do it the same as you or Maggie would.”
He made calls to ensure flowers were on the graves for Thanksgiving, Christmas and Valentine’s Day.
On another call, Buster told his father he worries about how his grandparents, Maggie’s parents, are handling the situation.
“They really got nothing to go do to escape from any of this, so I think they just drive themselves crazy thinking about it,” he said, adding that a “little trip” they had planned will be good for them.
“I worry all the time about them,” Alex Murdaugh responded. “They’re getting old and not able to go out. Let them know I think about them and worry about them.”
Out by Christmas?
On a lighter call to family near Christmas, Murdaugh was put on the phone with a young child to talk about the upcoming holiday.
“I been knowing Santa Claus for a long time,” Murdaugh told the boy. “I’m personal friends with Santa Claus. We go to lunch a couple of times a year when he leaves the North Pole.”
“What does he like to eat?” the boy asked.
“Chocolate chip cookies,” Murdaugh responded.
He later told the adult on the call, “They seem to think I’m going to get out before Christmas. I don’t get my hopes up.”
Murdaugh sounded skeptical of his chances of getting out on bond, and on some calls he jokingly asked people if they had paid his bond yet.
Elsewhere, he sounded upset at the size of his bond, which he believes is excessive.
“Bernie Madoff got a $10 million bond,” Murdaugh says of the famed Wall Street fraudster who stole from his clients. “That attorney in Lexington stole $6.5 million from retirement accounts, and he got a $100,000 bond.”
‘I wasn’t seeing light. I was seeing dark.’
Religion also has come up in the phone calls.
On one call, a woman named Lizzie asked if he received her letter about “my friend, the minister” after Murdaugh received a visit from a clergyman.
“I guess that’s the thing to do,” he said. “I don’t want to talk about it right now. I still have a hard time.”
“I know you do, and I feel like faith is going to be the thing to get you through this,” she said.
Murdaugh said faith is a major part of a program he’s a part of inside Alvin S. Glenn, but “you don’t even have to be (Christian), you know, they say it could work for you if you’re agnostic.”
“I put a bunch of thought into it when I was in rehab,” Murdaugh continued. “I struggled with that. I think I made myself get on the right path. I just get so angry.”
The woman said “You should. It’s part of the healing process and the grieving process. But we’ll see them again. I have no doubt about that.”
Lizzie then changed the subject and asked Murdaugh about being shot, saying she’d heard he’d temporarily gone blind after being shot in the head.
“I couldn’t see for a minute or two,” Murdaugh said.
“Were you seeing the light?” she asked.
“No. It wasn’t that bad,” he said. “I wasn’t seeing light, I was seeing dark. ... I thought, ‘I know I’m not dead, because I remember touching my head, thinking the back of my head’s blown off and I’m going to be blind. I could slowly stand up and ...”
At which point the call abruptly ends mid-sentence. Murdaugh’s pre-paid time on the jailhouse phone had expired.
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