Alex Murdaugh was sentenced on empty "circumstantial evidence" for life for the double murders of his wife Maggie (who the same day on the phone had asked if he wanted 'foot massage') and much loved son Paul (who the same day rode and joked together with his dad).
Everything in the big selling Alex Murdaugh case points to a deliberate judicial witch hunt. They took all his assets so he couldn't even pay the bail but was jailed for over a year before the trial - so he was hence hindered from defending himself.
Peter Klevius thinks a similar case but with a white judge and a black lawyer as the suspect, the result may have been different.
Alex Murdaugh may have been sloppier than most lawyers but chances are that his and his fellow lawyers "Ponzi scheme" didn't differ that much from average ones which are perhaps better wrapped. However, that's not murder. Moreover, as exemplified in the housekeeper case below, someone might argue that something is better than nothing, and that only the lawyer's hard won expertice made it possible. These kind of transactions happens legally on Wall street all the time.
After a one and a half year long smear campaign while they kept him jailed for an alleged economic issue, the trial took only a month!
The whole process since before the murders in June 2021 was a long depinberate character destroying smear campaign against an already heavily troubled human being who suffered cocaine addiction and was even prepared to commit suicide to rescue his other son's future.
The murder scene was (deliberately?) completely destroyed by authorities, making DNA, blood, foot prints etc. impossible to recover.
Although the murdered son Paul had got serious threats against him because of a boat accident he had caused years before where one passenger drowned, no effort was made to follow this obvious lead which included Paul's stolen rifle which had been used to shoot Maggie five times, while Paul was shot with a shotgun just yards apart. The guns were never found. Moreover, the very same week but some days before the murders, Paul Murdaugh was facing a hearing in a lawsuit brought by the family of Mallory Beach who died in the 2019 crash in the Murdaugh family boat. Paul was allegedly drunk driving the boat at the time and crashed it, throwing them all overboard.
However, here one has to take into account the Murdaugh lawyer family's notorious reputation of "always getting away with it", and that somebody might have thought of taking the law in their own hands before a possible acquittal.
There are no eyewitnesses. There is nothing on camera. There's no forensics tying him to the crime.
The main circumstantial "evidence" in the murder case was that Alex didn't tell the police that he had also been on the place some time before the murder i.e. 8:44 (Alex voice in the background on the phone video of some dogs), when according to the coroners estimate the death happened between 9:00 and 9:30. Alex called Maggie 9:04 and the police around 10:00 after having come back and discovered the bodies. So as a lawyer he certainly knew what most people know, i.e. that he would be the main suspect. So he chose first not to mention it before the video turned up.
Two semiautomatic guns (rifle and shotgun) were used, and from an angle that didn't match the tall Alex at all. Moreover, why use two guns? And the bodies were just yards from each other.
The muder weapons were never found but the rifle cartridges seemed to match old ones weathered ones found around the hunting plot, which fact could easily be explained by the murderers using Paul's rifle witch had been stolen long before.
Alex Murdaugh became the individual target for the "privilieged" white Murdaugh family tree. Just compare how negatively it's presented on Wikipedia, while other similar families are presented in much more positive light.
SLED also "reopened" an "investigation" into the "mysterious" 2018 death of housekeeper Gloria Satterfield and "planned" to exhume her body - but never did. And why should they because there was absolutely nothing "mysterious" at all - but only served the witch hunt on Murdaugh. The media tried actively to insinuate for the readers that she died from "violent impact" and mostly "forgot" to mention that she was treated for weeks on a hospital and told staff there that she just tripped by herself (possibly in contact with dogs on the stairs). She later died from pneumonia - possibly partly caused by injury on her lungs after the fall.
Murdaugh represented the clients in wrongful death lawsuits before allegedly pocketing part of the settlement money for himself in a Ponzi scheme (much like U.S. itself) on top of legal fees. In fact, he himself offered the idea to the Satterfields to sue him for wrongful death so they could get some money - which they did - although he took most of it for himself.
Shamefully, the only motive to the murders prosecutors could come up with was that Mr Murdaugh’s alleged financial crimes were key to proving his murder case, claiming that he killed Maggie and Paul "to hide his other crimes and scandals which were catching up with him". Rather the witch hunt - i.e. nothing like an ordinary investigation based on assumption of innocence until proven guilty.
Timeline
7 June 2021 – Maggie and Paul were shot dead at the family’s sprawling estate in Islandton. Maggie was shot five times with an automatic rifle and Paul was shot twice – once in the head and once in the chest – with a shotgun. Murdaugh made a dramatic 911 call at 10.07pm claiming he had returned home from visiting his elderly mother to find their bodies.
17 June 2021 – Murdaugh’s brothers Randy Murdaugh IV and John Marvin Murdaugh appeared on Good Morning America insisting their brother was not involved in the murders.
22 June 2021 – SLED announced that it was reopening an investigation into Smith’s death, based on information gathered during its investigation into Maggie and Paul’s murders.
22 July 2021 – Investigators released the 911 call made by Murdaugh on the night of the murders. In the call, he is heard sobbing as he tells the dispatcher “it’s bad” and “my wife and child have been shot badly”. Mr Murdaugh also tells the dispatcher that he hasn’t seen anyone on the property.
3 September 2021 – Murdaugh was confronted by the partners at his law firm PMPED after they discovered he was allegedly misappropriating millions of dollars of clients’ funds. He was forced to resign.
4 September 2021 – Murdaugh was shot on the side of a road in Hampton County. He survived and called 911, claiming he was ambushed in a drive-by shooting while he was changing a tyre on his vehicle. He was treated at a hospital for a “superficial gunshot wound to the head”.
5 September 2021 – Murdaugh entered rehab, announcing he was struggling with a 20-year opioid addiction and that he had resigned from his law firm PMPED.
13 September 2021 – Murdaugh confessed to police that he had orchestrated his own shooting as part of a botched hitman plot. He said he paid Curtis Smith, 62 – a former client, distant cousin and allegedly Murdaugh’s drug dealer – to shoot and kill him in an assisted suicide plot so that his surviving son Buster could get a $10m life insurance windfall. The two men were arrested and charged but Mr Murdaugh was allowed to be released on bond to return to rehab. SLED also opened an investigation into allegations that Mr Murdaugh had been misappropriating funds from his law firm.
15 September 2021 – SLED announced it was reopening an investigation into Satterfield’s 2018 death.
14 October 2021 – Murdaugh was released from rehab only to be dramatically arrested on charges of stealing funds from Satterfield’s family. The family had reached a wrongful death settlement with Mr Murdaugh but said they didn’t receive a dime. They filed a lawsuit against Mr Murdaugh claiming he pocketed the money.
19 November 2021 – Murdaugh was charged with almost 30 counts over the Satterfield wrongful death settlement.
3 June 2022 – SLED announced that it was planning to exhume Satterfield’s body.
12 July 2022 – The Murdaugh family was notified that Murdaugh would be charged with Maggie and Paul’s murders. The same day, Mr Murdaugh was disbarred from practicing law in South Carolina by the state’s Supreme Court.
14 July 2022 – Murdaugh was charged with the murders of Maggie and Paul – two counts of murder and two counts of possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime.
20 July 2022 – Murdaugh appeared in court on the murder charges where he pleaded not guilty.
22 November 2022 – Russell Laffitte, former Palmetto State Bank CEO, was convicted of financial fraud charges in connection to Murdaugh’s alleged white collar fraud schemes.
23 January 2023 – Murdaugh’s murder trial began in Colleton County Courthouse with jury selection. Opening arguments began two days later. By this time, Murdaugh was also facing more than 100 other criminal charges over the suicide hitman plot and the alleged white collar fraud scheme where he is accused of stealing more than $8m from clients. He is also facing several civil suits.
24 January 2023 – A judge approved the settlement agreement in the wrongful death lawsuit brought against the Murdaugh family by the Beach family.
23-24 February 2023 - Murdaugh takes the stand at his murder trial and confesses to financial crimes and to lying about his alibi but insists he did not kill his wife and son.
2 March 2023 - A jury convicted Murdaugh of the murders of Maggie and Paul.
3 March 2023 - Murdaugh is sentenced to life in prison.
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