Details In The Murdaugh Family Crime Case That Have People Asking Questions
It’s June 7, 2021, and the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division has received a disturbing phone call. Two individuals, the caller informs them, are lying dead inside a hunting lodge on a massive estate in a place called Islandton. This is the property of the prominent Murdaugh family, who for three generations have been at the heart of South Carolina’s system of law. The deceased, it turns out, are two members of the family: 52-year-old Margaret “Maggie” Murdaugh and her 22-year-old son, Paul. Paul and Maggie, it would soon become clear, had been murdered. The Murdaugh family were at the center of a dark tale, full of strange twists and turns. And they would never be the same again.
The fatal boat crash
Things had started to go really wrong for the Murdaughs a couple of years before the deaths of Maggie and Paul. In April 2019 Paul himself had been placed under arrest on suspicion of causing the death of Mallory Beach, who was only 19 at the time. Paul, then 20, was accused of operating a boat while inebriated, which led to a crash and the young woman being flung from the vessel. It took a week to locate her remains. Paul issued a plea of not guilty to those charges. The following month he was released, after coughing up a bond worth $50,000. A date for his trial wasn’t set.
Defending Alex on TV
The boating incident was a dark cloud following Paul in the lead-up to his own death. Could his murder have been connected to that case? Well, a few days after he and his mother were found dead, some members of the Murdaugh family made an appearance on Good Morning America. On the show were the brothers of Alex Murdaugh, who was husband to Maggie and father to Paul. Clearly sensing that Alex was under suspicion, the brothers argued that he had no involvement in their murders. They also implied that Paul had received threats against him online before he was killed. If things weren’t already messy enough for the Murdaugh family during this period, they were about to get worse. Just days after Maggie and Paul were found dead, 81-year-old family elder Randolph Murdaugh III passed away.
Alex gets shot
More drama soon followed. On September 4, 2021, word started to spread that Alex Murdaugh had been “shot in the head” — but he wasn’t dead. An unnamed individual had helped him get to an ambulance, where he was treated before being airlifted by helicopter to hospital. Jim Griffin, who served as Alex’s attorney, informed People magazine that his client had suffered bleeding to the brain and a fracture to his skull. The South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, naturally, launched an investigation in the wake of this shooting. They were treating the case as an attempted murder.
Alex checks into rehab
A couple of days later, Alex delivered a statement where he admitted to having a substance problem. He announced that he would be leaving his law firm and checking himself into rehab. He said, “The murders of my wife and son have caused an incredibly difficult time in my life. I have made a lot of decisions that I truly regret. I’m resigning from my law firm and entering rehab after a long battle that has been exacerbated by these murders. I am immensely sorry to everyone I’ve hurt, including my family, friends and colleagues. I ask for prayers as I rehabilitate myself and my relationships.”
