The boat raced along the narrow waterway, in the dark chill of the early hours of that winter’s morning in 2019, carrying six young friends home after a night out in Beaufort, South Carolina.
A bridge appeared out of the gloom and, unable to stop, the boat slammed into the pilings, throwing them into the water. Mallory Beach, just 19, recently graduated from high school, who dreamed of being an interior designer, was nowhere to be seen. Authorities began a frantic search, but the much-loved teenager’s body wasn’t found for a week.
Later, police would charge 19-year-old Paul Murdaugh, a member of one of the area’s most influential families, with being drunk behind the wheel (his blood alcohol level was allegedly 0.24 per cent).
That crash, and that charge, caused an unravelling in the powerful Murdaugh family that would ultimately see Paul’s high-profile attorney father, Alex, charged with numerous crimes, including stealing from clients, money laundering — and the murder of Paul and his mother, Maggie.
Because while Paul Murdaugh pleaded not guilty to the charges over Mallory’s death, he never made it to court for his trial — he was shot dead at close range, on June 7, 2021, along with Maggie, near the kennels at the family’s multimillion-dollar hunting lodge.
Alex found the bodies and called police. As AP reports, body camera footage from the first officer on the scene shows him saying, “My son was in a boat wreck a while back. We’ve been getting threats, I know that’s what it is.”
But the authorities were not convinced, especially as Alex Murdaugh’s empire began to crumble over the ensuing months. By July last year, when Alex was charged with the double murder, he was already facing more than 80 counts involving financial crimes, and a bizarre conspiracy where he allegedly arranged to have a man shoot him dead so his surviving son, Buster, could collect the life insurance.
Alex has maintained his innocence — his defence team describes him as a loving husband and father, and says investigators ignored other lines of inquiry to zero in on him — and his trial, with more than 250 witnesses, has been underway over recent weeks. The public and media interest is so strong, the court has set up a seating lottery and a building for those who can’t squeeze into the public gallery.
The gripping case also sparked a top-rating podcast by local journalist Mandy Matney and at least three documentaries, including one released last year by HBO. The latest, a three-episode Netflix series titled Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal, from the directors of the Emmy-nominated doco Fyre Fraud, will premiere next week, with interviews with Mallory’s boyfriend and Paul’s girlfriend, who were both on the boat when it crashed.
It’s easy to see what attracted filmmakers, keen to cater to an audience with an insatiable appetite for true crime — as veteran journalist and author Mark Seal wrote for Town & Country magazine, reporters from every TV network, as well as People, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and numerous other publications flocked to Hampton, population fewer than 3000, “mystified, intrigued, and scandalized”.
Joe McCulloch, a lawyer for one of the passengers in Paul Murdaugh’s boat, put it to Seal this way: “What doesn’t this story have? Mystery, tragedy, crooked lawyers, multiple murders, association with gangs, drugs in spades and dozens of victims.”
After all, the Murdaughs had been close to local royalty for generations. Alex Murdaugh’s father, grandfather and great-grandfather were the elected prosecutors for 87 years straight in Colleton, Hampton and three other counties, AP reports. When Alex’s murder trial got underway last month, the judge had to order that a portrait of his father, which usually hangs in the courthouse, be removed.
But as well as shock, there was sadness in the local community, too — and anger. Seeing an all-too-real tragedy become national entertainment fodder went against the grain.
Will Folks, founder of a local independent news outlet FitsNews, wrote of fielding multiple calls from producers wanting advice on filming, including one who referred to his home town as the “perfect backdrop”.
“Listen, before we start handing out cinematography awards and selecting the most ominous, brooding soundtrack music to accompany all of these cookie cutter ‘true crime’ productions,” he wrote, in a scathing editorial, “I feel obligated to remind the salivating vultures currently circling over Hampton county, South Carolina that this ‘perfect’ story involves any number of victims who are currently awaiting justice”.
Those “victims” include the deaths of at least two people that authorities have decided to look at with fresh eyes, after the revelations about the Murdaughs. The first is the 2015 roadside death of a young local man, Stephen Smith, originally thought a hit and run; homicide investigators are now examining possible ties to members of the Murdaugh family.
The second was Gloria Satterfield, the family’s long-time housekeeper, who reportedly fell down stairs outside their home and died in 2018; AP reports Murdaugh told her sons at her funeral that he would facilitate a wrongful death settlement, but allegedly took the $US4 million ($5.7m) payout for himself. People magazine revealed police have since announced they are also re-examining her death, including requesting that her body be exhumed.
A few months after Paul and Maggie were killed, Alex was confronted by colleagues from his law firm, who accused him of stealing money, People reported. The allegations were not made public for four days, but the following day, Alex reported being shot after he pulled over to change a tire on his Mercedes. The head wound was superficial.
But, as NBC reports, it didn’t take long for that story to fall apart. Two days later, Alex released a statement saying he had resigned from the firm and would go into drug rehab, having “made a lot of decisions that I truly regret”. A statement from the firm, accusing him of misappropriating funds, followed just hours later.
Police arrested Curtis Edward Smith, the distant cousin who shot Alex — but he claimed Alex asked him to kill him, in an effort to ensure his surviving son, Buster, could collect $US10 million ($14.4m) in life insurance (he denies pulling the trigger). The following day, Alex handed himself in to authorities, where he was charged with insurance fraud, conspiracy and filing a false report.
Alex’s lawyer, Dick Harpootlian, told the Today program in the US that Alex had been driven by depression, stemming from the death of his wife and son, and withdrawal from a long-standing opioid addiction. He was bailed and went straight into rehab.
But just weeks later, he was arrested again, charged with misappropriating the insurance funds from Gloria Satterfield’s case.
In the wake of the discovery about that case, The New Yorker reported, officials began poring over Alex’s handling of other big insurance settlements.
Dozens more charges followed over the ensuring weeks and months, relating to more than $US6.3 million ($8.9m) allegedly stolen from clients and other lawyers, People reported.
In The New Yorker article, James Lasdun wrote that the impression was of someone “living in a trance of entitlement, siphoning funds from any flow of money that entered his field of awareness”.
“Alex allegedly stole from colleagues and strangers, from the able-bodied and the injured, from the living and the dead, from the young and the old, from a white highway-patrol officer and a Black former football player,” he wrote.
In June 2022, Alex was indicted again, this time for a long-running money laundering and painkiller ring. Police allege he and Smith had conspired to buy and distribute oxycodone for almost eight years between 2013 and 2021, according to NBC. He was also facing civil suits, including from the families of Mallory Beach and Gloria Satterfield.
But Alex Murdaugh’s fall from grace was complete in July last year, when a grand jury indicted him in connection with the deaths of his wife and son.
Prosecutors argue Alex killed them out of a desire to cover up his financial wrongdoing, which could have been discovered as a civil suit from the Beach family progressed. Alex’s defence team say he has no motive to murder his loved ones.
Which side manages to convince the jury in this high-stakes case is about to be revealed and one thing is for sure — everyone is watching.
Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal is on Netflix on Wednesday February 22