Alex Murdaugh Found Guilty of Murdering His Wife and Son
On June 7, 2021, Alex Murdaugh's wife, Maggie, and youngest son, Paul, were found shot to death at the family's hunting estate in South Carolina's Lowcountry. Soon, the murders became known as the "Murdaugh Murders."
As Mark Seal wrote in Town & Country, "As the tale of his wife’s and son’s deaths unfurled in the days, weeks, and months to come, prosecutors would claim that lawyer Alex Murdaugh wasn’t the victim of these horrendous crimes, he was allegedly the perpetrator, at the center of a web of murder, insurance fraud, drug addiction, conspiracy, and coverups—culminating in not only the alleged killing of his own wife and son but also in his allegedly commissioning (or tricking) his distant cousin, client, and alleged drug dealer, Curtis Edward 'Fast Eddie' Smith, to kill him."
Today, following a guilty verdict, Judge Clifton Newman sentenced Murdaugh to life in prison, giving him two consecutive life sentences for the murders of Maggie and Paul. He will not have the possibility of parole.
Alex Murdaugh was indicted on two counts of murdering his wife and son in July 2022; he pleaded not guilty, and his trial began on January 23, 2022 at the Colleton County Courthouse in Walterboro, South Carolina.
On day 12 of the trial, a third witness identified the voice of Alex on a video that his son, Paul Murdaugh, took 10 minutes before his death.
"The three voices on that video are the voices of Paul Murdaugh, Maggie Murdaugh and Alex Murdaugh," Ronnie Crosby, a friend of the Murdaughs, said on the stand.
"How sure are you?" prosecutor Creighton Waters asked Crosby.
"I’m 100% sure that those voices are on the audio there," Crosby replied.
The previous week, two other friends of Alex's testified they could hear his voice. Early in the investigation, Alex had said he wasn't at the kennels that evening. Yet, when Alex took the stand to testify in his own defense on February 23, he admitted to lying and being at the kennels. "I lied about being down there, and I’m so sorry that I did," he said.
In his testimony, Alex also said "I was nowhere near Paul and Maggie when they got shot."
In the final days of the trial, jurors visited the crime scene where the double murder took place. According to the New York Times, "Jurors walked between the dog kennels and a nearby shed, and one juror could be seen standing in the door of a small feed room where Paul Murdaugh was killed."
Jurors deliberated for just three hours before they unanimously handed back a verdict: Alex Murdaugh was guilty of murdering his wife and son.
The murder trial also brings heightened attention to a deadly boat crash in 2019, killing Mallory Beach, that allegedly occurred while Paul Murdaugh was at the wheel. (Paul was facing those charges when he was killed.) In addition, police began to re-examine the 2018 death of Gloria Satterfield, a housekeeper who worked for the Murdaugh family, and the 2015 death of Stephen Smith, a 19-year-old who was found dead about 10 miles from the Murdaugh home. No charges have been pressed in the deaths of Satterfield or Smith.
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