It’s the court case that gripped America and is now the subject of a Netflix documentary series that attempts to unravel the shocking twists and turns of a crime involving a prominent and wealthy South Carolina family.
Following a six-week trial in the town of Walterboro, lawyer Alex Murdaugh, 54, was last week found guilty of the brutal murders of wife Maggie and their son Paul on 7 June 2021 and jailed for two consecutive life sentences. Speaking to the court last Friday, he said, “I’m innocent, I would never hurt my wife Maggie and I would never hurt my son Paul.”
But it turns out the Murdaugh case was not just about those killings – during the trial, it was revealed that the family is linked to a deadly boating accident and subsequent wrongful death charge, a faked murder attempt, drug addiction, suspected fraud, embezzlement and a mysterious fatal accident at their home.
The revelations have come as a shock for local residents of the Lowcountry area of South Carolina where, for generations, the Murdaugh family have held esteemed legal positions, both as criminal prosecutors and at the family’s private legal firm.
“They were the law,” says Hampton County Guardian editor Michael Dewitt in the documentary. “And at times, they were above the law.”
That all changed not with the 2021 murders but two years earlier, in February 2019, when Paul – who has an older brother called Richard, known as Buster – was involved in an accident.
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