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US attorney Alex Murdaugh (middle) at his hearing in October 2021
Photo: Lewis M. Levine/AP
Prominent US attorney Alex Murdaugh was charged Thursday with the alleged murder of his wife and son.
The 54-year-old is accused of shooting dead his wife Maggie with a rifle and his son Paul with a handgun on June 7, 2021, according to the indictment accepted by a South Carolina grand jury.
It's yet another bizarre twist in the high-profile criminal case that has plagued South Carolina for more than a year.
Murdaugh has previously been charged with insurance fraud, theft and other offenses and has been in custody since October.
He is accused of paying a man to shoot him dead in September last year - so his son Buster would collect more than $10 million in life insurance.
Curtis Smith, a former client of Murdaugh's who Murdaugh allegedly hired as a hitman, botched the job and fired a bullet that only grazed Murdaugh.
The 53-year-old suffered a head injury, survived and was flown to a hospital.
Murdaugh's staged assassination attempt came a day after he was fired from his law firm for alleged embezzlement of millions of dollars.
Murdaugh himself admitted a few days later that he had staged the assassination himself.
Murdaugh's attorney, Dick Harpootlian, said in September that Murdaugh was addicted to opiates and had spent heavily on the highly addictive painkiller oxycodone.
He wanted to take his own life, but feared that in this case the life insurance would not be paid out to his son.
That's why he wanted to make it look like he'd been gunned down, Harpootlian said at the time.
Murdaugh, who comes from a well-known legal family, is also accused of pocketing a $4 million settlement intended for the family's housekeeper, who died in a fall at the Murdaughs' home in 2018 life had come.
aeh/AFP
