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The Murdaugh murders: the dark story of a powerful dynasty of lawyers that has the United States in suspense

2023-02-28T10:52:38.212Z


A powerful South Carolina lawyer is on trial for killing his wife and son to, prosecutors say, hide the extent of his financial crimes and opioid addiction.


Like so many stories that end badly, this one began with a phenomenal drunkenness.

It was seized by three student couples four years ago in Beaufort, South Carolina.

The party ended in tragedy as they were heading home through the fog in the early hours of the morning on the sport-fishing boat of the father of one of them, a powerful lawyer named Alex Murdaugh.

He was driving, on the verge of an ethylic coma, his son, Paul Murdaugh, who smashed him against the stilts of a bridge.

Three of them were thrown overboard.

Mallory Beach, 19, lost her life.

Her body was not found until a week later.

That death uncovered the hidden history of the Murdaughs, a four-generation dynasty of lawyers who thrived in the Lowcountry, a flat piece of land, swamps and Spanish-moss oaks on the Georgia border.

That story is a southern gothic tale that includes unsolved murders, multimillion-dollar scams, tons of opiates, and a trial that climaxed last week with a high-stakes move: the two-day statement of the sole defendant, Alex Murdaugh, a man 54-year-old redhead, who is accused of murdering, 16 months after that foggy night, his 52-year-old wife Maggie, and one of their two sons, Paul, 22, whom he did not have time to prosecute for the Mallory Beach manslaughter.

And what could have moved him to patricide?

Hide the scope of his financial crimes, according to the Prosecutor's Office, which considers that by killing his family he sought to gain time and divert attention from his fraudulent dealings.

The trial, which is broadcast live by cable television channels for hours, has hooked American public opinion as a

true crime

too good to be fiction.

It has also proven too good for Netflix and HBO Max to pass up.

The first has released these days a documentary miniseries whose end will remain open until the jury decides whether to believe Alex Murdaugh, sentence him to 30 years in prison or leave him in the shadows for life, with no possibility of reducing his sentence.

On Thursday, Alex denied killing family members but also admitted that he had lied, harassed, he claimed, out of paranoia about his opiate addiction, when he said he was not at the part of the family estate where he allegedly found smears. 22.00 the corpses, riddled with a hunting rifle, her, and an assault rifle, him.

Defense attorney Dick Harpootlian holds a gun similar to the one used to kill the family.Jeff Blake (AP)

He also went into detail about his double life: under the guise of the successful lawyer who had everything under control, an addict hid who robbed partners and clients of a firm specializing in litigation and compensation to pay for a dependency that cost him, he said, a few $50,000 a week.

He is accused of having defrauded 8.8 million dollars (8.3 million euros), which is why the judge ordered his imprisonment in October 2021, before he was charged with the deaths of his wife and son. , of which he has since pleaded not guilty.

Until his explosive statement, Murdaugh had stuck to his alibi that he saw neither Maggie nor Paul in the house when he woke up from his nap on the day of their deaths, and left the property—a farm called Moselle, about sale for four million euros, with a farm, turkeys and deer for hunting and 3.5 kilometers of a river course for fishing and kayaking― to visit his sick mother.

It was upon returning, the suspect said, that he discovered the massacre, and called the police.

The Prosecutor's Office maintains that he first murdered his family and then tried to fabricate a story by visiting his parents' house.

The recording of that call is one of the key elements of the case.

In it, he is heard resorting to somewhat forced language —"My wife and son have been seriously shot!"—, and moviegoers will find it inevitable not to remember that scene in Fargo in which the character played by

William

H. Macy rehearsed the best way to warn about the botched kidnapping of his wife, commissioned and paid for by himself.

When the police arrived at the scene of the crime, the suspect told them that his son had been receiving threats for his responsibility in the boat accident.

In the trial, the Prosecutor's Office has provided videos in which the alleged murderer is seen wearing a white shirt without blood stains, despite the fact that during the call he had warned the operator that he had touched the bodies, as well as a clip from the Snapchat of the boy in which the father's voice is heard shortly before the time of death.

A man beset by tragedy

It took quite a while, however, before suspicion fell on Murdaugh, indicted a year after the night in question.

Supported by the image of the man besieged by tragedy, who also lost his father after three days, the patriarch Randolph Murdaugh III, he tried at first, and with some success, to direct those suspicions towards some of the participants in the fatal drunkenness. of your child's friends.

What if the massacre was revenge for the death of Mallory Beach?

Or because of the attempt by the family of influential lawyers to shift responsibility for the conduct of the ship onto another of the passengers, Connor Cook?

Witnesses say that, on the night of the maritime accident, the Murdaughs toured the hospital where the boys were taken to display a routine perfected over the years:

In the Netflix documentary, accusations are also made of destroying evidence and hindering the search for Beach's body, in collusion with officials involved in the investigation.

The residents of Beaufort seem to enjoy the newly released freedom before the cameras to speak without fear of a family of prosecutors who ruled the Lowcountry at will for a century and in whose closet have appeared, at the rate of the collapse of their untouchable image, two corpses more: that of the family maid and nanny for more than 20 years, Gloria Satterfield, and that of a young man named Stephen Smith.

Satterfield died in 2018 when he tripped over the dogs and fell down a staircase, according to the testimony of the Murdaughs (in an interview in the miniseries it slips that the employee "knew too much").

She was never autopsied, but the family has authorized her exhumation in order to reopen the case.

Among the clients that the defendant defrauded are her children.

Smith's body was found dumped on a road near the farm.

Police received several tips implicating Alex's other son, first-born Buster Murdaugh, who testified last week at the trial on behalf of his father, but they never investigated him.

The hypothesis that the boy had died after being hit by a car that then fled was taken for granted.

Both cases are receiving renewed attention, although no formal charges have been made by police.

Buster Murdaugh, son of Alex Murdaugh, listens to his testimony, last Thursday. Joshua Boucher (AP)

Alex Murdaugh's alibis began to crack three months after the murders of his wife and son, when an employee of the company his great-grandfather founded noticed a siphon of funds into an account in his name.

The discovery of that crime led to others, so, as a first step, they forced his resignation.

The next day, Murdaugh called 911 again.

This time, he recounted that someone had shot him in the head while he was changing the tire on his car.

It was soon proven that, in reality, the incident was part of a plot, hatched with a cousin of his, whom he convinced to fake his murder to, apparently, allow the only surviving son to collect the insurance.

After being caught in that lie, it was when he confessed his years-long addiction to painkillers.

For those facts, Murdaugh is accused of insurance fraud and criminal conspiracy, as well as lying in a police report.

These are not the only charges that await the fallen lawyer when the current trial ends, which began on January 23 and seems to be drawing to a close.

He will then be prosecuted for, among other crimes, fraud, money laundering and opiate trafficking.

And the case of the death of Mallory Beach, that drunken night in which it all began, is not closed either.

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Source: elparis

All news articles on 2023-02-28

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