“He was a good liar, but not good enough,” declared Craig Moyer, one of the twelve members of the jury who sentenced this man who was the protagonist of one of the most gruesome family stories in United States history.
The 54-year-old ex-literate’s life sentence marks the end of a dynasty of legal scholars that for decades controlled everything that happened in the Lowcountry, a five-county agricultural region on the southern border of South Carolina with Georgia.
The Murdaughs’ fame would never have crossed state lines if it weren’t for the fact that they themselves entered a spiral of corruption, suspicious deaths and lies that exploded on the night of June 7, 2021 when the patriarch unloaded the gun on his wife. Maggie52, and her son Paul Murdaugh22, on the vast family estate called the Moselle.
“I am innocent, I would never harm my wife Maggie or my son Paul,” the convicted man declared without remorse on Friday in the use of his right to the last word before hearing the sentence.
So much was the influence of the Murdaughs that the photograph of the defendant’s grandfather, a former prosecutor in the region, had to be taken down from the walls of the court in the small town of Walterboro so as not to affect the final decision.
Judge Clifton Newman, an old acquaintance of Murdaugh’s in South Carolina legal circles, was clear. “It wasn’t you anyway, it was the monster you became after taking dozens of pills,” I replied, referring to the addiction to opiates that I suffered with, with which I tried to justify the gaps in his story.
The definitive proof that dismantled the patriarch’s alibi was a snapchat videos filmed by his son moments before the murders where his voice was heard in the background. Until hearing the recording, Murdaugh always maintained that she was not at the family estate when the murders took place, later only admitting that she was close to it.
The crime was a desperate attempt by the defendant to gain the sympathy of public opinion and prevent the crime from coming to light. millionaire fraud to clients of his family’s law firm, which has operated in the state since 1910. His business partner, Chris Wilson, blamed him for the loss of $792,000 hours before the murder. But before the fall of the patriarch, many things happened between the members of the family.
The origins of the case
The extraordinary thing about this story is that in a region where nothing ever happens, three deaths in the last five years were related to a Murdaugh.
The impunity they enjoyed due to the family’s historic relationship with the police, judges and prosecutors in the region began to crumble 16 months before the patriarch’s violent catharsis as a result of a huge drunkenness of the youngest son, Paul.
The young man, then 20, his girlfriend, and two other couples of friends went partying on his father’s sport-fishing boat through the swamps of the region. The tragedy happened at 2 in the morning when Paul Murdaugh, almost in an alcoholic coma, crashed the boat against the pillars of a bridge after refusing to leave the controls to another of the passengers.
disappeared in the accident Mallory Beach, 19, whose lifeless body was not found until a week later. While the victim was being searched for, the Murdaugh patriarch tried to control the investigations in collusion with the agents involved in the investigation and blame another of his friends, Connor Cookas driver of the boat.
The young man was facing 25 years in prison with no trial in sight when he was killed by his father. But the accident drew attention to the family and suspicions began to circulate about the other two alleged skeletons they kept in the closet.
The death of the family maid and babysitter of more than 20 years, Gloria Satterfieldand that of a young man named Stephen Smithwho appeared lifeless on a road near the family farm.
suspicious deaths
The first died in 2018 on the entrance stairs of one of the Murdaugh houses due to the trauma suffered by a fall after, supposedly, tripping over the family dogs. An autopsy was never performed on her and no one questioned them then about what happened.
But Alex Murdaugh did not miss the opportunity to deceive the children of the deceased to keep a million-dollar compensation for her death. Now her remains will be exhumed in order to reopen the case.
Nor was the appearance under strange circumstances of the corpse of Smith, a gay boy who did not hide from the conservative Lowcountry community, in the middle of a road near the Murdaugh home, investigated.
The police received several tips that implicated the eldest son, Buster Murdaugh, 26 years old, and the only one who survives the scandals. The case was closed with the conclusion that he had been killed by a hit-and-run car that was never identified.
At the moment, there is no formal charge against him for this death, nor is it clear where he was on the day of the murders of his relatives.
Despite the danger of ending up in court, the young man attended the reading of the life sentence against his father, unfazed, after testifying in his favor during the trial with the aim of sowing loopholes in the prosecutor’s argument. .
A position that only corroborates the complex psychological relationship that the Murdaughs had, where the patriarch exercised the highest authority and Buster was chosen to inherit the privileged position in the legal system of the region.
Everything blew up on July 14, 2022 when Alex Murdaugh, already in jail for fraud $8.8 million to his clients, he was charged with the murder of his wife and son. The suspicions about the alleged involvement of the family in the other two deaths made sense.
The widespread shock set the national media circus to work on a case that reflects the deepest pathologies of power in American society. The patriarch did not hesitate to use this shady past to try to justify the existence of an alleged murderer who killed his relatives in revenge for the boat accident.
As well as trying to stage a fake assassination attempt before going to jail. But, by now, the police were no longer on his side. Cornered, he ended up confessing that he asked an acquaintance to shoot him in the head to simulate his suicide so that his firstborn could collect his life insurance policy.
Not even this version is clear yet. During the judgmentwhich has lasted six weeks, with the testimony of 76 witnesses and broadcast live followed by thousands of Americans, the defendant’s story changes proved his condition as a pathological liar.
And that everything that happened had its origin in unlimited power, paranoia and the whirlwind of alleged crimes in which the family members themselves got involved due to the impunity of their local influence.
A story with all the ingredients that has been amplified by two documentary series launched by Netflix y HBO during the trial. The productions have served so that the victims of the boat accident, the children of the housekeeper and several residents of the area have dispatched at ease about the misdeeds of this saga released after seeing the patriarch behind bars. Neither of the two platforms end the story. Much remains to be seen.
