A shackled Alex Murdaugh continued to maintain his innocence as he was sentenced to life in prison for the brutal murders of his wife Maggie and son Paul.
The disgraced legal dynasty heir appeared for his sentencing in Colleton County Courthouse on Friday morning where he was told he will spend the remainder of his life behind bars.
Dressed in a prison jumpsuit, with his hands cuffed and feet shackled, it was a far cry from the powerful and wealthy lifestyle that Murdaugh once enjoyed as the heir of a family that once dominated the lowcountry’s legal system.
While his surviving son Buster and other family members looked on from the public gallery, Murdaugh stood and addressed the court once again insisting his innocence of the brutal 7 June 2021 murders.
“I’m innocent. I would never hurt by wife Maggie and I would never hurt my son PawPaw,” he told the court.
While he gave a one-line statement professing his innocence, he then appeared to nod in agreement as Judge Clifton Waters told him that he will have to deal with what he did to his wife and son every night when he closes his eyes.
“I’m sure they come and visit you,” said the judge.
Murdaugh agreed that they do “all day and every night”.
But, when he was then given the opportunity by the judge to come clean, the disgraced attorney and serial liar reiterated his statement of innocence.
Judge Newman was not buying it, telling him: “It might not be you. It might be the monster you become when you take [a high volume] of opioids”.
The judge hinted that – in his eyes – he believes Murdaugh should have been sentenced to death for the heinous slayings of his wife and adult son and suggested that he would have handed down the death penalty if prosecutors had requested it.
Judge Newman said that other inmates had been sentenced to death for a lot less.
Addressing Murdaugh head on, the judge told him that his case was “one of the most troubling cases” he had ever handled – pointing out the fact the killer was a high-powered attorney from a prominent family in the lowcountry.
“We have a wife who has been killed, murdered, a son savagely murdered, a lawyer - person from a respected family who has control of justice in this community for over a century – a person whose grandfather’s portrait hanged at the back of the courthouse – that I had to have ordered removed in order to ensure that a fair trial was had,” he saod.
The court was expecting to hear victim impact statements but prosecutor Creighton Waters revealed that none of the victims wished to speak at this time.
The sentencing hearing began at 9.30am ET, with Mr Waters asking the judge to hand down the harshest possible sentence of two consecutive life sentences.
“It shows this man to be a cunning manipulator, a man who placed himself above all others, including his family, a man who violated the trust of so many – including his friends, his family, his partners, his profession, but most of all Maggie and Paul,” he said.
“A man like that should never be allowed to be among free, law abiding citizens again,” he said.
Mr Waters said that Maggie and Paul “like everyone else were unaware of who he really was... no one knew who he really was and that’s chilling”.
Over the course of the investigation and the trial, the lead prosecutor said he had discovered who the real Alex Murdaugh really was.
“I’ve looked in his eyes. He liked to stare me down as he walked by me during this trial. And I could see the real Alex Murdaugh,” he said.
Mr Waters offered his condolences to the Murdaugh family for the deaths of Maggie and Paul – both of whom were cut down “in their prime of life”.
He faces 30 years to life in prison on each of the murder charges and five years on each weapons charge. Sentences can be served concurrently – or consecutively.
Prosecutors are seeking the maximum penalty of life after taking the death penalty off the table.
Judge Clifton Newman did not indicate on Thursday how he plans to sentence Murdaugh, but did say after the verdict was delivered that the evidence was “overwhelming”.
Back on 7 June 2021, Maggie and Paul were gunned down on the family’s 1,700-acre estate.
Paul was shot twice with a 12-gauge shotgun while he stood in the feed room of the dog kennels – the second shot to his head blowing his brain almost entirely out of his skull.
After killing Paul, prosecutors said Murdaugh then grabbed a .300 Blackout semiautomatic rifle and opened fire on Maggie as she tried to flee from her husband.
She was shot five times including twice in the head after she had fallen to her knees.
Prosecutors said that Murdaugh killed his wife and son to distract from his string of financial crimes – at a time when his multi-million-dollar fraud scheme was on the brink of being exposed.
Jurors were told that on the day of the murders, Murdaugh was confronted by his law firm CFO about missing money that he had stolen.
Three days after the murders, a hearing was also slated to take place in a lawsuit over a fatal boat crash.
In February 2019, Paul had allegedly been drunk driving the family boat when it crashed, killing his 19-year-old friend Mallory Beach.
While Paul was facing felony charges over the crash, Murdaugh was being sued by the Beach family, and their attorney had filed a motion to compel to gain access to his finances.
Over four weeks and 61 witnesses, prosecutors laid out this alleged motive for the murders as well as presenting the bizarre hitman plot as part of his pattern of making himself a victim when accountability came knocking on his door.
On 4 September 2021 – one day after he was ousted by his law firm for stealing funds – Murdaugh claimed he was the victim of a drive-by shooting.
He kept up the story for days, with jurors being shown a police sketch of an imaginary man he claimed ambushed him.
Days later, he confessed that he had orchestrated the plot claiming he had asked his alleged drug dealer and distant cousin Curtis Eddie Smith to shoot him in the head so his surviving son Buster would get a $12m life insurance windfall.
Beyond Murdaugh’s other crimes, the state also presented jurors with a trove of circumstantial evidence tying him to the murders and revealing how he manufactured an alibi and covered his tracks in the aftermath.
Prosecutors said that he killed Maggie and Paul with “family guns”, trying to throw investigators off the scent by using two different guns.
After carrying out the attack, they believe he changed out of his bloody clothing – with jurors seeing a Snapchat video taken by Paul showing Murdaugh in one outfit just one hour before the killings. In bodycam footage when the first officer arrived on the scene, he was in a new outfit.
He is also believed to have taken the guns to his parents’ home to hide them.
A blue raincoat was later found in his parents’ home covered in gunshot residue. The state claims Murdaugh used the coat to move and hide the firearms used in the slayings.
Throughout the defence’s case, they sought to paint Murdaugh as a flawed character and an opioid addict – but one who loved his family and could never have carried out the murders.
While Murdaugh confessed on the witness stand about lying about his alibi, he sought to convince jurors that he was not the “family annihilator” the prosecution painted him to be.
He also admitted to stealing millions of dollars from his law firm and to orchestrating a bizarre botched hitman plot three months after the murders. He is awaiting separate trials in both of those cases.
Among the 14 witnesses called to try to convince jurors of his innocence was Murdaugh’s surviving son Buster and brother John Marvin, who said that he was left “heartbroken” by the murders.
Murdaugh’s conviction marks the latest twist in the saga of the man who was once the powerful heir to a South Carolina legal dynasty.
His family had reigned over the local justice system for almost a century, with three generations of the family all serving as the solicitor in the 14th Judicial Circuit solicitor’s office.
Murdaugh continued with the family tradition working in the local prosecutor’s office and also at the law firm PMPED, which was founded by his grandfather.
The murders of Maggie and Paul shocked the Hampton County community but also brought to light a series of scandals surrounding Murdaugh.
As well as the boat crash case, the fraud scheme and the botched hitman plot, there are at least two other unexplained deaths with some tie to Murdaugh.
Days on from the murders, an investigation was reopened into the 2015 death of Stephen Smith, who was found dead in the middle of the road in Hampton County.
The openly gay 19-year-old had suffered blunt force trauma to the head and his death was officially ruled a hit-and-run. But the victim’s family have long doubted this version of events, with the Murdaugh name cropping up in several police tips and community rumours.
An investigation was also reopened into another mystery death connected to the Murdaugh family – that of their longtime housekeeper Gloria Satterfield.
She died in 2018 in a mystery trip and fall accident at the family home. Murdaugh then allegedly stole around $4m in a wrongful death settlement from her sons.
Murdaugh is now also facing around 100 charges over the multi-million-dollar fraud scheme and roadside shooting cases.
