The first call notifying 911 that Maggie and Paul Murdaugh had been shot to death came one year ago June 7 from a frantic Alex Murdaugh, who told operators he found his wife and youngest son bleeding out and not breathing on the family’s Moselle estate.
“My wife and child have been shot badly. ... Please hurry!” Alex Murdaugh yelled through the phone to the 911 operator in a high-pitched voice between what sounded like stifled sobs. “They’re on the ground out at my kennels... I’ve been gone — I just came back ... Neither one of them’s moving.”
A year later, the gruesome slayings have turned into one of the state’s most high-profile, longest-running unsolved murder mysteries.
No one has been charged in their deaths, and no suspects have been publicly named. Law enforcement also has reported few details, if any, but said after the shooting deaths that there was no threat to the public. They did not elaborate.
“Before SLED brings any charges, they want it to be a solid case. They aren’t going to bring murder charges against anyone in such a high-profile case unless they are sure they can convict somebody,” said veteran Columbia lawyer Jack Swerling, who estimates he’s handled some 300 murder cases in his nearly 50-year career.
The investigation into the killings has not gone cold, said Mark Keel, whose agency, the State Law Enforcement Division, is leading the investigation into the Murdaughs’ deaths.
“It’s still very much active,” Keel said last week, declining further comment.
The night of June 7, 2021, Paul, 22, and his mother, Maggie, 52, were found dead, yards apart near dog kennels on the ground of their 1,700-acre estate in rural Colleton County.
They had been shot with two different weapons — Maggie with an assault rifle, and Paul with a shotgun. Paul is said to have been shot at close range, and Maggie, as she was running.
Up until that night, Alex Murdaugh, 53, was known as a wealthy attorney and fourth-generation member of one of South Carolina’s major legal and political dynasties. And Paul remained under the judicial microscope after being indicted on boating under the influence charges that led to the 2019 boat crash death of Mallory Beach, 19.
Now, a year later, Murdaugh remains jailed in Richland County on a slew of financial crimes, and is a person of interest in Maggie and Paul’s deaths. His fall from grace includes a botched murder-for-hire plot to secure a $10 million life insurance payout for to his only surviving son, Buster.
He also has been caught in an ever-expanding vortex of criminal allegations, lawsuits and reports that link him and his family to other violent deaths.
No one has forgotten about the killings around Hampton and Colleton counties, a low-lying Lowcountry region of swamps, rivers, forests and small towns that some have openly referred to as “Murdaugh Country,” because of the family’s prominence in the area’s social, political and legal life for the past 100 years.
“People are getting tired of hearing about this, but they still want to know who killed Paul and Maggie,” said Michael DeWitt, the longtime editor of local newspaper the Hampton Guardian, who is working on a book about the Murdaugh family and the killings. “They want to know if justice is going to be served.”
Alex Murdaugh’s financial fall
Murdaugh and his former law firm enjoyed a reputation of being able to land big verdicts and settlements. And he was prominent in his own right, having served as president of the S.C. Association for Justice, an honor bestowed by the state’s trial lawyers.
Since the deaths of his wife and son, Murdaugh’s reputation has unraveled in South Carolina.
A host of state grand jury indictments making the news since last fall depict Murdaugh as a rogue lawyer who for 10 years lived a secret life hatching schemes to steal $8.4 million from clients, his former law firm and associates.
In the fraud allegations, according to state grand jury criminal indictments, Murdaugh betrayed all those around him: his law firm, from whom he is alleged to have stolen millions; his family name, since his great-grandfather, grandfather and father were all top prosecutors and political bosses in the five-county Lowcountry 14th Judicial Circuit; and his friends.
Some of Murdaugh’s longtime friends also have been caught in the scandals.
Two friends — lawyer Cory Fleming and banker Russell Laffitte — are accused of being co-conspirators in his thefts of millions of dollars, according to indictments. Laffitte has been fired from his post as CEO of Palmetto State Bank, and Fleming has since had his law license suspended.
Both are free on bond pending trial.
A third longtime friend, lawyer Chris Wilson, allegedly helped Murdaugh in his efforts to hide money from his law firm and is, although not charged, cooperating with police, said his lawyer, Bakari Sellers.
Wilson is a likely prosecution witness in any upcoming trials.
Today, Murdaugh sits in the Alvin S. Glenn Richland County jail, unable to post a $7 million bond.
The once-proud Murdaugh law firm, which for more than 100 years had “Murdaugh” prominently displayed in its name, now calls itself the Parker Law Group.
Revelations about Murdaugh reach far.
They have raised questions about South Carolina lawyers and bankers and the kind of stewardship they exercise over clients’ money. The state Supreme Court’s disciplinary arm is investigating Murdaugh and lawyers associated with him.
The FBI is now probing the Palmetto State Bank, which served as an important place for Murdaugh and his accomplices to launder stolen money, according to indictments.
The saga has captivated many outside South Carolina. Half a dozen people are said to be writing books. “People” magazine has done two cover stories, major television networks have run true-crime specials, and HBO Max and Netflix have documentaries in the works.
Police mum on evidence into Murdaugh deaths
Financial charges against Murdaugh are supported by reams of documents and human witnesses.
The deaths of Murdaugh’s wife and son have no such evidence, at least none that has been made public.
There were no witnesses, and no surveillance videos to the deaths. The Murdaughs’ estate is in a remote wooded area with no close neighbors.
No one knows the exact time of death, though it was estimated to be around 9 to 10 p.m., from about twilight to total darkness.
The two weapons used in the killings have not been found, sources have said. Maggie’s cellphone was found the next day on the roadside, well away from the murder site. No one has explained why her phone wasn’t with her.
SLED hasn’t commented on whether its investigation includes gun shot residue, DNA, spatter, footprints, fingerprints, cellphone location records and the like. The night of the killings it rained, possibly perhaps complicating the gathering of evidence at the scene.
Paul and Maggie being killed with two different kinds of weapons also poses a special problem, said Swerling, the Columbia criminal defense lawyer.
“Police are going to have to place those weapons in the hands of somebody, or two people,” Swerling said. “It’s possible that one person used two different weapons. But it’s more probable that there were two different people involved.”
Murdaugh said he was at the estate earlier, but left before the two were shot and came back to discover the bodies of his wife and youngest son lifeless and bleeding out on the ground, according to his lawyers Jim Griffin and Dick Harpootlian.
During the hour or so he asserts he was away from the estate visiting his mother, Murdaugh has said he was on the phone, talking with friends, one of whom was his longtime lawyer friend, Chris Wilson.
If police have cracked Murdaugh’s alibi, they are not telling anyone.
Whatever evidence SLED has, it hasn’t yet been enough to make an arrest and secure a conviction in court, especially if prosecutors are confronted with aggressive lawyers like Murdaugh has — Harpootlian and Griffin, who between them have many years experience convincing juries to see things their way.
One of the few announcements SLED has made about the case was to say it was re-investigating the 2015 violent death of Stephen Smith, whose body was found on a Hampton County road one night and said to have been a hit-and-run. Smith reportedly had ties to the Murdaugh family.
And SLED confirmed last week it is exhuming the body of Gloria Satterfield, Murdaugh’s longtime housekeeper who was said to have died of injuries in a 2019 fall at his 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.
Margaret Oakes, a Furman University professor whose specialties include true crime, said the Murdaugh murders grip peoples’ imagination for numerous reasons.
“It’s such a high-profile case, and there were two more suspicious deaths involved, and when the mom and the son were shot, there were two different weapons,” Oakes said. “That says there was probably more than one person involved. ...These (the killers) are people who know what they’re doing, and they’re not going to be sloppy.”
Solving the case may turn on a crucial bit of evidence turning up or somebody coming forward, Oakes said.
“People do walk into police stations and say, ‘I need to tell you something that’s been on my mind for years,’” Oakes said.
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