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South Carolina lawyer Alex Murdaugh was sentenced to two consecutive lives in prison on Friday for the murders of his wife and son in a case that chronicled the dismantling of a powerful southern family in a tale of privilege, greed and addiction.
Murdaugh, 54, was sentenced by Judge Clifton Newman to life without the possibility of parole in the same courtroom where his father, grandfather and great-grandfather each tried cases as elected prosecutors for more than 80 years. A portrait of his grandfather hung in the back of the room until Newman ordered it removed for the trial.
Jurors deliberated for less than three hours Thursday before finding Murdaugh guilty as a result of an investigation into the June 7, 2021, shooting deaths of Murdaugh’s wife, Maggie, and youngest son, Paul. The South Carolina lawyer also stole millions of dollars from the settlements of his mostly impoverished clients and worked hard to secure his surviving son, Buster, a $12 million life insurance payout, according to authorities.
“I’m clean. I’m not going to hurt my wife, Maggie, and I’m not going to hurt my daughter Paw Paw,” Murdaugh said in brief comments Friday, using a nickname for his late son.
Her 52-year-old husband was shot four or five times with a gun and her 22-year-old son was shot twice with a gun in a kennel near their rural Colleton County home.
Prosecutors did not have the weapon used to kill the Murdaughs or other direct evidence such as confessions or blood spatter. But they have a mountain of circumstantial evidence, led by a video locked on the child’s cell phone for more than a year – a video taken minutes before the killing of the witnesses who testified to take the voices of Alex, Maggie and Paul Murdaugh.
The testimony ended with Murdaugh appearing on the witness stand, where he maintained his innocence in the deaths of his wife and son.
Admit to lying about where
Murdaugh had repeatedly told police after the killings that he was not in the kennels and instead went to sleep before going to see his sick mother that night. Murdaugh called 911 and said he found the body when he got home. But in testimony on the 23rd day of the trial, Murdaugh admitted joining Maggie and Paul at the kennels, but said he returned home shortly before the fatal shooting.
He blamed his decades-long addiction to opioids for making him paranoid, creating a distrust of the police. He said that when he went down that road, he felt trapped in a lie.
WATCH | Murdaugh took the stand to defend:
Alex Murdaugh, a prominent South Carolina attorney, denied murdering his wife and son when he testified in his own defense in a second-murder trial. Prosecutors say Murdaugh killed his youngest son, Paul, and his wife, Maggie, as part of an elaborate cover-up scheme.
Through more than 75 witnesses and almost 800 pieces of evidence, jurors not only heard about the horrific crime scene, but also about betrayed friends and clients, Murdaugh’s failed attempt to commit his own death in an insurance fraud scheme, the fatal 2019 shipwreck. Paul was charged, and the death of 2018 housekeeper Gloria Satterfield, who died in a fall in front of Murdaugh.
A now-disbarred lawyer has admitted to stealing millions of dollars from family businesses and clients, saying he needed the money to fund his drug habit.
The list includes the Satterfield family. Murdaugh is accused of pocketing multimillion-dollar wrongful death insurance payments related to the death of a 57-year-old housekeeper.
Before being charged with murder, Murdaugh was in jail awaiting trial on 100 other charges, ranging from insurance fraud to tax evasion.
Prosecutor Creighton Waters on Friday characterized him as a “cunning manipulator.”
The Murdaugh family law firm grew to include dozens of lawyers over the years suing railroads, corporations and other big businesses. Other brothers remain in the company they founded a century ago.
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