Photo: Orange County Department of Corrections
Alex Murdaugh has been found guiltyof the 2021 murders of his wife, Maggie, and son, Paul.
After weeks of testimony including more than 75 witnesses who took the stand, the verdict was delivered on March 2, 2023.
On July 14, 2022, more than a year after the killings, the once-prominent South Carolina attorney was indicted for the murders of his wife and son. He was charged with two counts of murder and two counts of possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime, and was convicted on all charges.
While Alex’s closely-watched trial began on Jan. 23, authorities brought him in for questioning days after Maggie and Paul were fatally shot.
Even after his conviction,Alex has more legal woes. He faces dozens of charges for alleged financial crimes, including misappropriating money from his law firm, defrauding clients of funds and computer crimes.
The shocking case serves as the subject of Netflix’s true crime docuseries,Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal, which premiered on Feb. 22. It chronicles “how the prominent Murdaugh familypurportedly used and abused their wealth and privilegeto the extreme, and which family member is allegedly behind it all,” according to the streamer.
Here’s everything to know about Alex’s current whereabouts.
Who is Alex Murdaugh?
The Murdaugh Family.
Alex is a former prominent attorney from the Lowcountry region of South Carolina, along with his powerful Murdaugh family who has dominated the legal landscape in the southern part of the state for 100 years. In fact, the five-county district has become known as “Murdaugh Country” due to three family members who have consecutively served as solicitors from 1920 to 2006.
A solicitor in South Carolina is comparable to a district attorney in other U.S. jurisdictions, of which the Murdaugh member who served was in charge of prosecuting all criminal cases in the state’s 14th circuit district overseeing Allendale, Colleton, Hampton, Beaufort, and Jasper counties.
Randolph Murdaugh Sr. founded a one-man law firm in 1910 in Hampton (about 65 miles inland from Charleston) which later evolved into the Murdaugh family law firm. Three generations of the family have practiced law in the county since.
As for the double murder that Alex is standing trial for, on June 7, 2021, agents with the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division responded to a 911 call saying that two people were dead near some dog kennels at the family’s isolated Islandton home in Colleton County. Theywere found dead on the 1,770-acre property, where the family has a hunting lodge,the Associated Press,The Island PacketandWSAVreported at the time.
Maggie, Paul and Alex Murdaugh.
The Murdaugh family also had a home in Hampton, where the South Carolina Law Enforcement Divisionopened an investigationinto the 2018 death of the Murdaughs' housekeeper, Gloria Satterfield, who died after what was purported at the time to be a trip-and-fall accident.
On Oct. 14, 2021,Alex was arrestedand charged with misappropriating insurance settlement funds in the wrongful death suit that followed the mysterious trip. Later in October, a local South Carolina news outlet reported thatAlex’s private island— co-owned with a deceased drug-smuggling suspect — has been placed up for sale, pending court approval.
What was Alex Murdaugh charged with?
Mic Smith/AP/Shutterstock
Alex’s attorneys issued a statement on Sept. 15, 2021, saying they learned of a warrant for his arrest and that he planned to voluntarily surrender to authorities the next day. The next day, Alex turned himself into the Hampton County Law Enforcement Centerand was charged withinsurance fraud, conspiracy to commit insurance fraud, and filing a false police report. After, Alex surrendered his passport to authorities and was released back into rehab.
Upon his release from the drug rehab facility, agents with the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division and the Florida Department of Law Enforcementtook Alex into custodyon Oct. 14, 2021. He was arrested and charged with misappropriating insurance settlement funds in the wrongful death suit that followed the trip and fall death of housekeeper Satterfield.
Alex had been in jail at the Richland County Detention Center sincewith a bond set at $7 million, one of the highest bonds in state history.
When did Alex Murdaugh’s trial begin?
Alex Murdaugh on Jan. 27, 2023.Grace Beahm Alford/The Post And Courier via AP
Alex’s trial was held at theColleton County Courthousein South Carolina. It began on Jan. 23 with closing arguments predicted to start on Feb. 23, according to attorneys' estimates.
On Feb. 8, the trial was adjourned afterthe courthouse received a bomb threat. Just before 12:30 p.m., Judge Clifton Newman abruptly dismissed the jurors for a “break.” After they filed out, he addressed the rest of the gallery, saying, “We have to evacuate the building at this time. We’ll be in recess until we discover what’s going on.”
Officials confirmed to PEOPLE that the Colleton County courthouse had received a bomb threat, but are not sharing further details. “This is very serious,” a Colleton County police officer told PEOPLE, who was in the courtroom at the time.
PEOPLE confirmed that Alex Murdaugh was evacuated from the building via a different route than usual. His family was also ushered out of a back exit, where they got into SUVs and drove away. Courthouse employees and trial watchers stood outside the courthouse as police set up a perimeter.
On Feb. 23, Alex took the stand in his own defense during his weeks-long murder trial. Prosecutors revealed evidence that seemingly provedAlex repeatedly lied about his whereaboutson the day his wife, Maggie, and son, Paul, were killed.
For nearly two years, Murdaugh has maintained that he hadn’t been with Paul and Maggie at the family’s dog kennels, where the pair was found slain, on the night they were killed. But on the stand, he admitted that he had been the kennels.
“I lied about being down there, and I’m so sorry that I did,” Murdaugh said.
What was Alex Murdaugh’s verdict?
Steve Helling
On March 2, 2023, Alex was found guilty of the 2021 murders of his wife, Maggie, and son, Paul. Jurors deliberated for less than three hours before delivering the verdict. He was also found guilty of two counts of possession of a weapon in the commission of a crime,per theNew York PostandCNN.
What is Alex Murdaugh’s sentence?
The day after he wasfound guiltyof themurdersof his wife and son, Murdaugh returned to court for his sentencing, wherehe received two life sentences in prison, which will run consecutively.
source: people.com
