HAMPTON, South Carolina—Staging his own murder in a twisted insurance scheme. Dealing drugs while hiding his own addiction. Stealing millions of dollars from defenseless clients and his own family-run law firm.
Over the last year, Alex Murdaugh’s name has been associated with a slew of wild allegations—and a bevy of criminal charges. But at least one Hampton County resident remembers the disgraced legal scion as a friendly face with an ever-present smile who was quick to offer a friendly handshake, promise a favor, and even strike a check and donate to a local charitable cause.
Now, Patricia Moore, a shopkeeper on Hampton’s main street, is grappling with the fact that the former lawyer she described as having an “Andy Griffith personality” is accused of murdering his wife and youngest son in cold blood.
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“To hear a parent kill a child—their own child—that’s crazy,” Moore told The Daily Beast. “To know he had that sinister side that has gone back a while—that’s scary.”
After more than 13 months of investigation, a Colleton County grand jury on Thursday indicted the 54-year-old on two counts of murder and two counts of possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime in connection with the June 2021 killings of his 52-year-old wife, Margaret, and their 22-year-old son, Paul. Attorneys for Murdaugh were quick to deny the charges—allegations they refuted long before they even became official.
But the murder charges are only the latest allegations against Murdaugh, who has been jailed since autumn under a cascade of charges, many alleging the lawyer stole from his clients for years, including a number of people who were medically or financially vulnerable.
Murdaugh is currently facing 16 state grand-jury indictments, including 81 counts of financial crimes for allegedly stealing more than $8 million from clients and his former law firm. Last month, he admitted he owes the sons of his former housekeeper Gloria Satterfield more than $4.3 million after he was accused of funneling money from her wrongful death suit to enrich himself. Satterfield died in a 2018 fall on the Murdaugh property, an incident that is itself under fresh investigation in light of his spectacular fall from grace; last month, her body was reportedly set to be exhumed. (Murdaugh has not been charged in connection with her death.)
The former lawyer has also been accused of laundering money in a drug trafficking scheme with a distant relative—the same man who was alleged to be a co-conspirator in the botched assisted-suicide plot last September.
Moore, who owns Spinbad Church Supply and Printing, admitted that it has been difficult to reconcile the Alex Murdaugh she knew with the accused thief and drug dealer—and, now, the alleged murderer of his own flesh and blood.
“He is involved,” Moore said, making it clear she harbored no doubts about his guilt (but also not claiming any specific knowledge about his alleged crimes). “Of course he’s gonna say he didn’t do it.”
Standing in her shop on Thursday, Moore recalled a man she said had been wildly generous years ago. Among his charitable acts, she said: an annual check to the Hampton County Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Steering Committee in the years before the coronavirus pandemic. When the steering committee held its annual banquet to award scholarships to local students, Moore, who is Black, said Murdaugh and his since-slain wife “would be the only white people there.”
Another time, Moore recalled, her late husband, Johnny, faced legal trouble after being accused of copyright violations related to the burning and selling of music CDs. Moore said she and her husband eventually got in touch with Murdaugh for help. Within days, Moore claimed, merchandise confiscated by police from their four stores was returned, and they faced no further legal problems.
The lesson, she said, was that the Murdaughs had a lot of friends in law enforcement. (Neither Murdaugh’s lawyers nor local authorities immediately responded to requests for comment.)
“When you get in trouble, you go to the Murdaughs,” Moore said, expressing what she claimed is—or at least was—local conventional wisdom about the prominent family. “If they like you, you don’t have anything to worry about.”
According to prosecutors, Murdaugh’s own wife and son were not so lucky.
