The same blunt severity that guided the guilty verdict of lawyer Alex Murdaugh for killing his wife and youngest son was shown by the judge this Friday when he sentenced him to the longest possible sentence: two consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole.
"I imagine that every night the image of both of them visits him before he goes to sleep," said Judge Clifton Newman, chief of the Colleton County courthouse in Walterboro, who took his time with a lengthy monologue before delivering his judgment.
Murdaugh, who, dressed in the khaki jumpsuit of prisoners in South Carolina, listened to his fate with a lost look, replied: "Every day, every night", to later add: "I want to reiterate my innocence.
I have never, under any circumstances, hurt Maggie.
And I have never, under any circumstances, hurt Paul."
On Thursday, the jury had three hours of deliberations left to reach their verdict.
After hearing from 76 witnesses and examining a mountain of circumstantial evidence, its 12 members considered it proven that Murdaugh, 54, killed his wife, Maggie, 52, and their young son, Paul, 22, on the night of on June 7, 2021 at the kennels on the family's estate, a vast property ideal for hunting and fishing called the Moselle and located in the Lowcountry region of the southern tip of South Carolina.
The assassin, a member of the fourth generation of a family of prominent lawyers who dominated life in the area for a century, used a hunting rifle to kill her and an assault rifle to riddle him.
Later, always according to the jury, an alibi was fabricated, according to which, on the day in question, he did not see his wife and his son in the house when he woke up from his nap and went to see his sick mother. he.
Upon returning, he discovered the massacre and called the police.
The recording of that call, in which he is heard using somewhat forced language, was key to putting together the case of the Prosecutor's Office, which managed to present him as an irredeemable liar.
Another piece of evidence that made his story fall was a one-minute video in which, shortly before the time of the two deaths, his voice is heard at the scene of the crime.
She recorded it by his son for the Snapchat social network.
It also did not help the defense that the defendant had a pristine white shirt when the police arrived.
During the emergency call, he had told the operator that he had touched the corpses to take their pulses.
Shortly before the sentence was read, prosecutor Chreighton Waters took the floor to define Murdaugh as a "cunning manipulator."
A man who lived a double life for years, in which he was an opiate addict embroiled in a serial fraud scheme involving partners in the law firm founded by his great-grandfather and many of his clients.
It was seeing himself about to be discovered that, according to the Prosecutor's Office, moved him to parricide, according to the Prosecutor's Office.
The prosecution believes that Murdaugh was confident that the tragedy would buy him time and the sympathy of his neighbors.
The defense argument is that the police became so obsessed with their client's guilt that they "fabricated" evidence and invented a theory about his motivations.
Following the murders, it took a year for Murdaugh to be indicted.
“No one knew this man.
None of those who believed he knew who he really was really had a clue,” Walters continued relentlessly.
His "depravity, insensitivity and lack of remorse" recommended, according to the prosecutor, that he be given the maximum penalty: "two consecutive life sentences."
The process has transcended the borders of a piece of land in South Carolina to conquer national attention.
Helping to fuel interest was the decision by HBO Max and Netflix to take the dark story of the fall of the Murdaugh house as material for docuseries.
After being convicted of the most serious crimes he faced, Murdaugh's judicial ordeal is still far from over.
He still must answer for 99 charges derived from alleged financial crimes.
The alleged fraud account amounts to 8.8 million dollars, about 8.3 million euros.
It was the discovery of these embezzlements that caused Alex Murdaugh's alibis to begin to unravel three months after the murders of his wife and son, when a company employee noticed a diversion of funds to an account in his name. name.
The discovery of that crime led to others, which ended with his resignation from the firm.
The day after leaving work, Murdaugh called 911 to say that someone had shot him in the head while 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 so that his other son, Buster, Paul's older brother, would collect the insurance.
When caught in that lie, he confessed to his years-long addiction to painkillers.
The case whose sentence was announced this Thursday has focused on two other unsolved Lowcountry deaths: that of the family's maid and nanny for more than 20 years, Gloria Satterfield, and that of a young man named Stephen Smith.
Satterfield died in 2018 after tripping over the dogs and falling down a staircase, according to the Murdaughs' testimony.
An autopsy was never performed, but the victim's 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 her farm.
The police received several tips implicating Buster in the death, but chose not to pursue those leads.
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