In June 2021, the wife and youngest son of Alex Murdaugh were murdered at their rural estate, sending him into a spiral that ended with him hiring a hitman to kill him.
ZUMA Press, Inc./Alamy Stock PhotoFormer lawyer Alex Murdaugh has been convicted of multiple serious crimes including the murders of his wife and younger son.
With wealth, a wife, and two sons, South Carolina lawyer Alex Murdaugh appeared to have it all. For generations, his family had held power in the Lowcountry, serving as prosecutors and running one of the region’s most influential law firms.
Everything changed in June 2021, when Murdaugh’s wife, Maggie, and younger son, Paul, were found shot to death at the family’s hunting estate. Murdaugh’s subsequent attempt at orchestrating his own murder to ensure his elder son, Buster, would be able to collect on his $10 million life insurance — falsely believing that suicide would prevent this — only cast a greater spotlight on his family’s troubles. As it turned out, those troubles traced back further back than anyone realized.
What began as a tragedy spiraled quickly into a captivating and disturbing web of secrets, fraud, and addiction that forever tarnished the Murdaugh name — a name now associated with scandal, murder, and greed.
The Murders At Moselle
On the night of June 7, 2021, Alex Murdaugh dialed 911 in a panic. The transcript of the call has Murdaugh describing the scene in grisly detail:
“She’s shot in the head, and he’s shot really bad,” Murdaugh tells the dispatcher, as he looks at the bodies of his wife and son. The dispatcher responds, asking where Paul had been shot. Murdaugh replies, “Ma’am I don’t know but he has blood everywhere… I can see brain, I can see his brain. She’s facedown. I tried to turn her a little bit, but she’s got a hole in her head.”
Maggie Murdaugh/FacebookBuster, Maggie, Paul, and Alex Murdaugh.
At the time of their murders, Maggie was 52 and Paul was just 22 years old. They were found near the dog kennels at Moselle, the family’s sprawling 1,700-acre estate in Islandton, South Carolina. Both had been shot multiple times at close range.
Initially, Murdaugh told investigators he had been visiting his mother, who suffered from dementia, when the killings occurred. However, his story soon began to unravel. Cell phone records, GPS data, and forensic evidence contradicted his alibi.
Most chillingly, a Snapchat video taken on Paul’s phone just minutes before the murders captured Alex’s voice in the background.
For prosecutors, this was enough to prove that Murdaugh had lied about his whereabouts that night. The next question was, what else had he been lying about?
As more details about Murdaugh came to light — including his crumbling finances — he grew more depressed and desperate. It wasn’t long before his name was in the headlines once again.
A Staged Shooting Exposes A History Of Addiction
By the end of that summer, Murdaugh’s public image had all but fully collapsed. Not only had he publicly lied about the night of the murders, his presence at the scene and the other details of his life suggested a motive and an opportunity. On top of that, his law partners had accused him of siphoning millions from the firm and its clients.
A 2024 Department of Justice statement revealed that Murdaugh had been embroiled in multiple financial schemes dating back more than a decade. One wire fraud scheme beginning in or around July 2011 lasted until October 2021 and involved Murdaugh’s banker, Russell Laffitte, while a second scheme that ran from 2005 to September 2021 saw Murdaugh obtaining money from his clients and law firm by means of false pretenses.
He had also, from around February 2018 to October 2020, conspired with attorney Cory Fleming to defraud the estate of his former housekeeper and his homeowner’s insurance carriers.
As lawsuits mounted up and criminal charges loomed, Murdaugh’s opioid addiction — which had quietly consumed him for two decades — was also spiraling out of control. He was desperate. More importantly, he was scared. So, he concocted yet another scheme — one more bizarre than any that preceded it.
On Sept. 4, 2021, Murdaugh was shot in the head while stopped on a rural road. He was supposed to die in the shooting.
Initially, he claimed the gunman was a stranger who drove a blue truck. Within just a few days, however, he admitted he had orchestrated the incident himself, hiring a former client and drug supplier, Curtis Edward Smith, to kill him so that his surviving son, Buster, could collect a $10 million life insurance payout. Murdaugh was of the belief that if he died by suicide, that policy would not pay out to Buster. Not only was he wrong, but his new plan also failed when the bullet only grazed his head.
NetflixCurtis “Cousin Eddie” Smith, Murdaugh’s co-conspirator.
Smith was charged with assisted suicide, insurance fraud, assault, and multiple firearms offenses. Murdaugh, meanwhile, turned himself in on Sept. 16 and was charged with conspiracy, insurance fraud, and filing a false police report. Authorities later revealed he staged the shooting while pretending to fix a flat tire that wasn’t flat at all.
Murdaugh’s lawyer, Richard Harpootlian, claimed at the time that his client was driven to this desperate act by despair, according to NBC News. At the same time, Murdaugh issued a public statement about the event:
“The murders of my wife and son have caused an incredibly difficult time in my life. I have made a lot of decisions that I truly regret. I’m resigning from my law firm and entering rehab after a long battle that has been exacerbated by these murders.”
But by this point, the public had no reason to trust a word Murdaugh had said. Twice in a single summer, he had been caught in a lie — and a dark pattern was emerging.
A Pattern Of Scandals And Suspicious Deaths
As investigators pulled at threads, they came to realize that this staged suicide attempt wasn’t an isolated misstep. In fact, Murdaugh had been embroiled in numerous scandals that were just as sinister.
Paul Murdaugh after being hospitalized for an alleged drunken boating incident.
In 2018, for example, the family’s longtime housekeeper, Gloria Satterfield, died after what was described as a “trip and fall” accident at the Murdaugh home. No autopsy was conducted, and her death certificate listed the cause as “natural,” inconsistent with her injuries. As the Island Packet reported at the time, the certificate said Satterfield had died of “acute subdural hemorrhage,” indicating a stroke, but it wasn’t clear if that meant the stroke had caused her to fall or if she suffered a stroke at the hospital afterward and died.
That distinction was important, though. If the stroke was what caused her fall, and the injuries she sustained were what killed her, that would still be classified as an “accidental” death. Death from a stroke, on the other hand, would be considered “natural.”
Her estate eventually sued Alex Murdaugh, but they never received the settlement money. It has since been made evident that Murdaugh was stealing the money, but under renewed scrutiny years later, her sons finally began receiving restitution.
Another mysterious case from 2015 also resurfaced. This involved 19-year-old Stephen Smith, who was found dead on a rural road about 10 miles from Moselle. Initially ruled a hit-and-run, inconsistencies in the case led the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) to reopen the investigation in the wake of the Murdaugh murders. As CNN reported in March 2023, Smith’s death was now being investigated as a homicide.
While the exact link remains unclear, Smith’s death continues to raise questions about just how influential the Murdaugh family had truly been — and what they were capable of.
The family was also entangled in civil litigation connected to Paul. In 2019, while drunk, Paul had allegedly driven a boat into a bridge, killing 19-year-old Mallory Beach. At the time of his death, Paul was awaiting trial for boating under the influence. In 2023, Beach’s family reached a $15 million settlement with the Murdaughs and other parties.
NetflixMallory Beach, victim of a drunken boating incident, with Anthony Cook.
All of this, in consideration with Murdaugh’s financial crimes, unveiled a web of lies and deception that had gone on for years.
Many of his victims were vulnerable people who trusted him. In one case, he diverted settlement funds meant for a man left quadriplegic after an accident. In another, he stole from the children of a deceased client.
In November 2023, Murdaugh pleaded guilty in state court to over 20 financial charges and was sentenced to 27 years. Five months later, in April 2024, a federal judge handed down a 40-year sentence for wire fraud, bank fraud, and money laundering, along with nearly $9 million in restitution.
“Murdaugh’s victims turned to him when they were particularly vulnerable, after suffering serious injuries and losing loved ones” said Adair F. Boroughs, U.S. Attorney for the District of South Carolina. “They put their trust in him as their lawyer, and he betrayed them. His crimes were cold, calculated, and brazen, and he earned every day of his 40-year sentence. We hope that it provides at least some closure to his victims.”
Of course, these weren’t the only crimes for which Alex Murdaugh was found guilty.
The Murdaugh Murder Trial
NetflixAlex Murdaugh in court.
The deaths of Maggie and Paul Murdaugh had been the inciting incident for a series of events that saw the gradual undoing of 111 years of prominence for the Murdaugh family. But even as Murdaugh’s financial schemes finally came to light, the question still remained of what, exactly, had happened to his wife and son. Prosecutors had a compelling story: Alex Murdaugh had murdered Maggie and Paul to create sympathy and buy time as his financial crimes emerged.
Murdaugh’s murder trial began in January 2023, with prosecutors presenting cellphone records, GPS data, and Murdaugh’s shifting statements to investigators. The Snapchat video taken by Paul became crucial to their case. If Alex had been home that night — in the very same area where Maggie and Paul were killed, nonetheless — why had he lied? More importantly, wouldn’t he have seen or heard something if there had indeed been another person there to kill them?
As the Associated Press reported, Murdaugh denied guilt to the very end of the trial:
“As I tell you again, I respect this court. But I am innocent. I would never under any circumstances hurt my wife Maggie and I would never under any circumstances hurt my son Paul-Paul.”
“And it might not have been you,” Judge Clifton Newman replied. “It might have been the monster you became.”
Defense Lawyers Continue To File Appeals And Demand A New Trial
With that, Alex Murdaugh was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences without parole. But his lawyers argued, during the trial and after, that investigators had mishandled the crime scene, and that no direct physical evidence tied Murdaugh to the shootings.
They continued to file appeals alleging jury tampering by Colleton County clerk of court Becky Hill, for instance, claiming that Hill made prejudicial remarks to jurors to encourage a guilty verdict. In January 2024, a judge denied the motion for a new trial, but as ABC News reported, Hill was later indicted for misconduct and perjury, largely relating to a book about the trial that she had co-authored. The book also faced accusations of plagiarism, leading to it being pulled from sale.
ZUMA Press, Inc./Alamy Stock PhotoBuster Murdaugh in court during his father’s trial.
Most recently, two major updates to the Murdaugh trial have taken place. The first, reported by Realtor.com on Sept. 8, 2025, was that the Murdaugh murder home — Moselle — was once again up for sale with a $2.2 million price tag after previously being purchased in early 2024 by Alex Blair for $1 million.
The second report, from WCSC on Sept. 10, was that Murdaugh’s lawyers have once again asked for a new trial, arguing once more that police mishandled evidence and citing Becky Hill’s trial as additional support for their previous claims of jury tampering. The state Supreme Court has yet to make a ruling on this, but prosecutors made their own feelings known in a 181-page document filed a month earlier.
The jury convicted Murdaugh “because he was obviously guilty, not because three jurors heard Becky Hill’s ‘foolish and fleeting’ comments about his upcoming testimony,” they wrote.
For now, at least, Alex Murdaugh remains behind bars.
After reading about the South Carolina lawyer who tried to arrange his own murder, learn about the five reluctant and imprisoned hitmen. Then, read about the Florida man who was murdered after helping the motorist sent to kill him.
