For almost a century, the Murdaugh family was synonymous with justice in South Carolina.

Since 1920, three generations of Murdaugh men held the position of 14th Circuit Solicitor in succession, spearheading prosecution across five counties in South Carolina’s low country for decades.

Alex Murdaugh leveraged his family’s esteemed reputation for years, carving out a successful career at the influential law firm his family established. This provided the means to sustain an opulent lifestyle, complete with a beach house, a boat, and a sprawling hunting estate in Colleton County.

However, Alex’s seemingly charmed life unraveled in June 2021, when the murders of his wife and son exposed his hidden web of deceit, unveiling a shocking saga of power, corruption, and murder that captivated the nation.

Maggie and Paul Murdaugh’s 2021 Murders

The unraveling began on June 7, 2021, when Alex reported to authorities that he returned from visiting his sick mother to discover his wife, Maggie, 52, and his son, Paul, 22, brutally shot dead near the dog kennels at their Islandton residence, located about 65 miles from Charleston.

“I’ve been up to it now, it’s bad,” Alex confided to a 911 dispatcher in a chilling call made at 10:07 p.m.

The mother and son had been killed with two separate weapons. According to an indictment later released by authorities, Paul was shot several times with a shotgun, while Maggie was killed with an assault rifle. 

“You have two different ammunitions used to kill them,” Senior Special Agent David Owen of the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) would later tell Dateline: Secrets Uncovered. “So automatically, you’re gonna think, ‘OK, well, possibly have two shooters.’”

Alex told Owen just hours after the murders that he shared dinner with Maggie and Paul that night, then fell asleep on the couch watching television, while Maggie and Paul went down to the dog kennels. 

According to his account, he woke up around 9 p.m. and went to visit his mother before coming home to discover the bodies.

Alex’s attorneys Dick Harpootlian and Jim Griffin insisted in a statement to on Oct. 31, 2025 that the charges against Smith were “still pending” and had not gone to trial.

Mounting Fraud Allegations Against Alex Murdaugh

Alex was indicted by a Hampton County Grand Jury in November of 2021 for conspiracy, false insurance claim payment of $10,000 or more, and filing a false police report in connection with the incident—but his legal troubles didn’t end there.

Authorities learned that just one day before the botched assisted suicide, Alex resigned from his law firm, then known as Peters Murdaugh Parker Eltzroth & Detrick (PMPED), after questions emerged about his financial dealings at the firm. The next month, the firm accused Alex in a civil suit of secretly stealing money from the firm and his legal clients and depositing the money into his own bank account, according to previous reporting by Oxygen. 

“He lied and he stole from us,” the firm wrote on its website at the time. “No member of PMPED was aware of Alex’s scheme. When we learned he betrayed our trust, we requested his resignation immediately.”

In the months that followed, Alex—who was later disbarred by the South Carolina Supreme Court—was accused of stealing millions from his clients and the firm, including the family of his own housekeeper Gloria Satterfield. 

Satterfield died after a trip-and-fall accident at the Murdaughs’ Colleton County home in February 2018, according to a statement from the Satterfield family’s attorneys Eric S. Bland and Ronnie Richter. After her death, Alex encouraged Satterfield’s sons to file a wrongful death suit against him, urging them to hire attorney Cory Fleming, Alex’s college friend.

According to The New York Times, Fleming reached a $4.3 million settlement for the family, but Satterfield’s sons would later say they were never notified of the agreement or received any money.

The siblings later reached a civil court settlement with Fleming, his law firm and their insurance provider to recoup the money, according to a statement from their attorneys.

Fleming pled guilty in 2023  to federal conspiracy charges in connection to the allegations that he “conspired” with Alex to defraud Satterfield’s estate, according to a statement from the District of South Carolina United States Attorney’s Office. He was sentenced to four years in prison.

By December of 2022, per NBC News, Alex was facing more than 100 charges—both on the federal and local level—for the financial schemes.

He pleaded guilty to 22 federal counts of financial fraud and money laundering in September of 2023 and agreed to a plea deal for dozens of state level charges two months later.

One of the most damaging pieces of evidence to come out at trial was a video taken by Paul on his cell phone at 8:44 p.m., just minutes before investigators believe he was killed. Paul was taking a video of a dog staying at the kennel, but Alex’s voice could be heard in background, placing him at the murder scene, according to Dateline: Secrets Uncovered.

“The aha moment for me was the kennel video,” State Attorney Alan Wilson said in the episode. “It showed that he was there within minutes of their murder and it gave me the comfort factor that I needed to be able to indict.” 

Data from Alex’s Chevrolet Suburban also showed that he had slowed the vehicle’s speed on the way to his mother’s house in an area where Maggie’s phone was later recovered.

Alex took the stand himself during the high-profile trial to refute the prosecution’s claims, insisting that he did not kill his wife or son. He did admit to being at the dog kennels that night, adding that he initially lied to investigators because he “wasn’t thinking clearly” as a result of his drug addiction.

After deliberating for less than three hours, a jury found him guilty. He was sentenced to life in prison. He’s also serving concurrent sentences for his financial crimes, NBC News reported.

Alex’s attorneys have appealed his murder conviction. 

To learn more about Alex’s crime spree, watch Oxygen’s special Alex Murdaugh: Death, Deception, Power, available now through the Oxygen app.