Alex Murdaugh, the powerful lawyer who asked a handyman to kill him, had a spectacular fall from grace. Five people in his family’s orbit have died in recent years, and investigators are looking for connections.
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“I want you to shoot me in the back of the head,” Smith recalled Murdaugh telling him. He said Murdaugh had a loaded gun in his hand.The unsettling tale grew stranger still when, 10 days later, state law enforcement agents arrested Smith, 61, accusing him of collaborating with Murdaugh in a botched scheme to kill him.
“Where does it stop?” said John P. Freeman, an emeritus professor of law and ethics at the University of South Carolina. “You can’t talk to anybody in South Carolina who isn’t talking about this case and is not just astonished by what’s going on.” “I don’t know if betrayed is even the word for it,” Smith said recently, sitting on a love seat in his modest home outside of Walterboro, South Carolina. “I thought of him as a brother, you know, and loved him like a brother. And I would’ve done almost anything for him. Almost.”Despite a recent influx of newcomers, South Carolina retains some of its old Southern insularity and traditions. It is a state where old family names can still carry significant weight.
How much, investigators have been trying to learn, did Alex Murdaugh wield his powerful connections to protect his family and amass his own fortune? A grand jury indicted Paul Murdaugh on a charge of boating under the influence causing death, but he was killed before he had an opportunity to stand trial.
Early one morning in February 2018, Satterfield fell on the front stairs of the Murdaughs’ isolated house. Maggie Murdaugh found her bleeding and called 911, according to Eric Bland, a lawyer for Satterfield’s two adult sons. He said the Murdaughs told the family that she had tripped over their dogs.Despite the Murdaugh family’s account, her death was ruled “natural” on her death certificate, the result of a brain bleed. No autopsy was done and the coroner was not contacted.
Five months later, court records show, a judge approved a settlement agreement to pay the sons $2.8 million from Murdaugh’s insurers and award more than $1 million in lawyers’ fees. But the sons say they never heard about the deal.
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