WALTERBORO, South Carolina—As if the dozens of charges for financial crimes and allegedly attempting to stage his own killing were not enough, Alex Murdaugh has a new problem: murder charges implicating him in the deaths of his own wife and son.
A Colleton County grand jury on Thursday indicted the 54-year-old former lawyer 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. They were both found fatally shot near the hunting dog kennels at the family’s 1,700-acre estate in South Carolina—and Murdaugh was the one who called 911.
“Over the last 13 months, SLED agents and our partners have worked day in and day out to build a case against the person responsible for the murders of Maggie and Paul and to exclude those who were not,” SLED Chief Mark Keel said in a statement. “At no point did agents lose focus on this investigation. From the beginning I have been clear, the priority was to ensure justice was served. Today is one more step in a long process for justice for Maggie and Paul.”
ADVERTISEMENT
The indictment does not provides many details—including what allegedly prompted the slayings—but does state that Murdaugh fatally shot his wife with a rifle and his son with a shotgun, allegations his attorneys deny. While the prospect of such charges was teased in the media in recent days, their announcement represented the most disturbing episode yet in the saga of the once-prominent lawyer, a man whose downfall has taken on the veneer of a Greek tragedy.
“All the efforts of our office and the law enforcement agencies involved in this investigation have been focused on seeking justice for the victims’ families," Attorney General Alan Wilson said on Thursday. “We want to thank the State Law Enforcement Division, the attorneys and staff in our office, and everyone who worked on this case for their tireless efforts to gather evidence and follow where it led. We also want to thank the Colleton County Grand Jury for listening to that evidence and for their service to the people of the state.”
Murdaugh will face a bond hearing for the indictment on Wednesday in Colleton County court.
On Thursday morning, after the jury ended its session, members walked out the doors of the 200-year-old Colleton County courthouse to greet sunny skies. They exited the grounds quickly, as did Assistant Attorney General Creighton Waters, who left the courthouse through a secure area in a black SUV without stopping to answer questions.
Two grand jurors did speak with The Daily Beast, though their accounts were inconsistent. One man, unwilling to linger, said the Murdaugh case was not discussed. But a woman told The Daily Beast the Murdaugh murders were discussed, even if she wasn’t sure whether Alex Murdaugh had been indicted.
The juror explained that she had grown sleepy during the presentation by prosecutors.
In a statement to The Daily Beast after the indictment, Murdaugh attorneys Jim Griffin and Richard Harpootlian said their client “wants his family, friends and everyone to know that he did not have anything to do with the murders of Maggie and Paul.”
“He loved them more than anything in the world,” the lawyers said on behalf of Murdaugh, who is currently in Richland County jail.
The lawyers noted that they plan to immediately file a speedy trial motion and request that the Attorney General turn over all evidence within 30 days. They said they w0uld demand that Murdaugh face trial within 60 days after they obtain that evidence.
Following the news of the indictments, residents of Hampton expressed their outrage over the grim slayings in their midst—and the new suspect.
“So heartbreaking that Alex could have facilitated the deaths of his own wife and son—you certainly don’t want to be on his bad side!” one resident, Sali Parker Morris, told The Daily Beast. “We’re praying for all the family.”
Rose Dobson-Elliott, the Hampton County Administrator, told The Daily Beast that the flurry of events around the Murdaugh clan does not reflect her neighbors. “I guess I kept hoping against the odds that it would not happen. Of course innocent, until proven guilty,” Dobson-Elliott said. “A lot of people’s lives have been destroyed in this saga, and many innocent. However, they will be forever linked.”
Murdaugh is also charged with orchestrating his own murder in a twisted insurance plot to benefit his surviving son, Buster. But the new charges effectively bring the downfall of the family full circle, as the Murdaughs—once an untouchable force in the Low Country—were thrust into the spotlight after the double homicide last year.
Since then, Alex Murdaugh has faced a slew of allegations involving drug addiction, theft, and insurance fraud. But even as he was named a person of interest in his wife and son’s murders after calling police to report them, he had never been charged in connection with their deaths—until now.
The South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) has said that on June 7, 2021, Murdaugh called for help around 10:07 p.m. after discovering the two near the dog kennels. At the time, Paul was facing charges in connection with a 2019 boat crash that killed 19-year-old Mallory Beach.
In the seven-minute 911 call, Murdaugh can be heard frantically telling an emergency dispatcher his “wife and child have been shot badly” and that neither of them were moving.
“I’ve been up to it now. It’s bad,” Murdaugh said.
While Colleton County deputies responded to the scene, SLED quickly took over the case—launching a tight-lipped 13-month investigation into who sought to kill members of a family whose previous patriarchs served as local prosecutors. According to the State, Maggie had been killed with an assault rifle while apparently attempting to flee the scene. Paul had been fatally shot with a shotgun at close range.
Murdaugh’s lawyer did reveal last year that SLED has been investigating him “from the get-go” as a person of interest in the double homicide. Attorney Jim Griffin also insisted that his legal team was not worried about the investigation because Murdaugh had an alibi for the time of the murders and “had no motive to kill” his family.
“You would think that if Alex was the one who did it, that SLED would have been able to establish that pretty easily that night,” Griffin previously told Fox Carolina in October. “You would think they would have searched his house and found blood somewhere. You would think they would have found the murder weapons on the property. You would think they would come up with something to link Alex to the murders, forensically or independent evidence. To my knowledge, they have not done that.”
Griffin also previously denied reports to The Daily Beast that Murdaugh and his wife were having marital troubles prior to the murder, noting that he reviewed Murdaugh’s text messages with his wife and found nothing out of the ordinary.
On Thursday, Murdaugh's lawyers insisted that “it was very clear from day one that law enforcement and the Attorney General prematurely concluded that Alex was responsible for the murder of his wife and son.”
“We know that Alex did not have any motive whatsoever to murder them,” Griffin and Harpootlian added.
But just months after Murdaugh’s family was murdered, the lawyer found himself in legal trouble after, police say, he failed in a bizarre attempt to orchestrate his own murder for a $10 million insurance payout. During a December bond hearing, Murdaugh insisted said he only devised the wild scheme amid grief over the murders of his wife and son—and was also in the throes of a withdrawal from a two-decade addiction to opioids.
Murdaugh called police on Sept. 4, 2021, to report that he had been shot in the head by an unknown truck driver on a country road. Days later, he allegedly admitted to police that Curtis Smith shot him at his behest in an attempt to stage his own murder for the insurance payout. He was later whisked away to rehab for opioid addiction.
Since his arrest over the botched insurance scheme, Murdaugh has faced 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. Murdaugh has been named in lawsuits as well, including allegations he conspired to influence the 2019 investigation into a drunken boat crash involving his late son Paul that killed a teenage girl.
Prosecutors alleged that Paul Murdaugh drunkenly crashed his dad’s 17-foot boat while driving home with five friends—launching three of them, including Mallory Beach, into the water. Beach’s body was found a week later by two fishermen about five miles from the boat crash.
Murdaugh has also admitted to financial crimes around the death of his former housekeeper. Gloria Satterfield, a 57-year-old longtime nanny, died on Feb. 2, 2018, from injuries sustained at the Murdaugh family’s Hampton County home. In a 911 call from the incident released last year, a man is heard saying that Satterfield “cracked her head and there’s blood on the concrete and she’s bleeding out of her left ear,” though the details of what led up to that remain unclear.
While Murdaugh is not charged with the Satterfield death, he has admitted to funneling millions of dollars meant for her sons in a wrongful-death lawsuit for his own enrichment.
The Murdaughs have also been tied to the 2015 death of 19-year-old Stephen Smith. While details of any potential involvement remain unclear, last June, authorities announced that they would open an investigation into the unsolved case “based upon information gathered during the course of the double-murder investigation of Paul and Maggie Murdaugh.”
In a statement to The Daily Beast, Sandy Smith, the teenager’s mother, noted that “while the many questions about my son’s death remain, this action gives me hope that we will get justice for my Stephen.”
“We think of him and miss him every day,” she added.
