Alex Murdaugh

Alex Murdaugh, 54, was convicted in the fatal shootings of his wife, Margaret, and their youngest son, Paul, in a case tied to a slew of financial crimes.

Lawyers for Murdaugh moved for a mistrial after the verdicts were read. [ unsolved double homicide](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/mother-son-prominent-south-carolina-family-found-shot-dead-grandfather-n1270614), but it soon unraveled into wider allegations of [ financial fraud](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/alex-murdaughs-bond-set-7m-financial-crimes-charges-rcna8590), a [ hired hitman plot](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/south-carolina-man-charged-assisted-suicide-shooting-alex-murdaugh-n1279208) and [ drug addiction](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/behind-alex-murdaugh-s-fall-grace-drug-addiction-fueled-opioid-n1279453), and it revived inquiries into other curious [ deaths linked to the Murdaugh family](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/sons-murdaugh-housekeeper-killed-trip-fall-will-receive-money-lawyers-n1280705). Each juror was then asked whether the verdicts were correct and said yes. He faces 30 years to life in prison without parole. "We had no doubt that if we had a chance to present our case in a court of law, that they would see through the one last con that Alex Murdaugh was trying to pull — and they did," Waters said. [ Murdaugh admitted on the stand last week](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/live-blog/alex-murdaugh-trial-live-updates-rcna72136) to having lied about his location before the murders because of his drug addiction and general paranoia. [sprawling case based on circumstantial evidence](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/prosecution-alex-murdaugh-trial-wraps-case-hard-evidence-killed-wife-s-rcna70485) to convince jurors that Murdaugh was guilty, using electronic data and video extracted from the victims' cellphones to suggest that only he had the motive, means and opportunity to kill his wife and son. During the state's closing arguments Wednesday, lead prosecutor Creighton Waters said that Murdaugh had much to lose if his financial malfeasance was exposed but that the deaths of his wife and son promptly stopped the law firm's investigation and stymied the boat crash case to his advantage. The motion was denied by the judge, who said that the verdict was a matter for the jury and that there was enough evidence for it to have found Murdaugh guilty. [three felony counts of boating under the influence](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/alex-murdaugh-arranged-whisper-campaign-2019-fatal-boat-crash-lawsuit-n1279726) in connection with a 2019 boat crash that killed a teenage passenger. [deliberating for three hours](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/juror-removed-alex-murdaugh-trial-improper-discussions-courtroom-rcna73055), the jury of seven men and five women convicted Murdaugh, 54, of two counts of murder in the fatal shootings of Margaret, 52, and their youngest son, Paul, 22, in June 2021. [Alex Murdaugh](http://www.nbcnews.com/news/crime-courts/alex-murdaugh-indicted-murder-charges-summary-timeline-rcna38026), the disgraced South Carolina lawyer accused of murdering his wife and son to gain pity and distract from financial crimes threatening to topple his reputation, was found guilty Thursday in their slayings.

But two years ago that life unravelled when Alex Murdaugh - the fourth generation scion of a local legal dynasty - called police to report his wife Maggie and ...

One of these jobs, according to Alex Murdaugh and his lawyers, was to act as Mr Murdaugh's "personal drug dealer" and regularly supply Mr Murdaugh with pills. Mr Murdaugh admitted on the stand he had lied. He had been drunk, they said, descending into a cruel and angry alter ego that friends had nick-named "Timmy", and who allegedly hit his girlfriend the night of the accident. but he took care of so many," his father said at the trial. A mobile phone video taken at the Murdaughs' dog kennels by Paul about five minutes before prosecutors say the killings took place features the voice of Mr Murdaugh talking to Bubba. Testifying at his murder trial, he confessed to the theft, blaming a desperate and expensive addiction to oxycodone. But he briefly found himself in hot water after reportedly passing his father a John Grisham novel, which was later deemed contraband. A full-time homemaker, she was described as an adoring mother to her two sons. Buster testified in his father's defence, describing Mr Murdaugh as a loving presence who was "destroyed" by the murders of Maggie and Paul. But the strangest request came in September 2021, three months after Maggie and Paul's murders, when Mr Murdaugh asked Mr Smith to meet him on the side of a rural road one Saturday, and shoot him in the back of the head. He is now on trial for their murders. But the patina of success hid a number of seedy secrets - Mr Murdaugh was stealing from his clients and colleagues, as much as $3.7m (£3m) in a single year alone.

The five-week trial of Alex Murdaugh has dominated headlines and cable news channels, and the murders have been the subject of podcasts and even two ...

I think people like to have endings and they like to have justice. I think that's been a big, big selling point for Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, that we get the bad guys. But, you know, on the other hand, we don't know who's carrying a gun in many places now in the United States. These are cases of human behavior that go way, way, way to the nth degree that we don't experience in our own lives every day. And most of us, I hope, wouldn't go so far as to murder our families ... In this case, the victims are dead, but we still want to seek some kind of justice.

I was in South Carolina last week: scene of the trial and home of the Murdaugh dynasty. Both tell us a lot about race and power today, says Guardian ...

Two of these alleged victims were the sons of the Murdaugh family’s longtime housekeeper and nanny, Gloria Satterfield, who died after an accident in the Murdaugh home in 2018. At an earlier hearing, one of Alex Murdaugh’s lawyers used as mitigation his addiction to painkillers, inviting the judge to look upon Murdaugh’s sorry face as the encapsulation of what the opioid epidemic has done to the US. The story, currently the subject of Netflix and HBO multi-part documentaries, would seem so wild and convoluted as to illuminate nothing beyond itself, were it not for the influence of the Murdaugh family. Many of the people Alex Murdaugh is accused of defrauding were poor, Black clients seeking personal injury compensation through his family’s law firm. [someone shot](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-58577936) Alex Murdaugh in the head – an act, it is alleged, that Murdaugh commissioned himself, paying a gunman to kill him so his surviving son could collect on insurance. In the dock: the 54-year-old Alex Murdaugh, scion of a legal dynasty stretching back 100 years, who has been found guilty of murdering his wife and son.

A South Carolina jury convicted former attorney Alex Murdaugh in the killings of his wife and son. He faces up to life in prison when he's formally ...

The jury on Thursday convicted Alex Murdaugh, a prominent South Carolina lawyer, of murdering his wife and son.

The prosecution seized on that admission — how readily, and easily, he had lied to the police, his family and friends — in an attempt to convince the jury that he was lying about not having killed his wife and son. He also said that when he spoke with his father about 20 minutes after prosecutors say the murders took place, Alex Murdaugh sounded “normal” — at a time that Mr. “He said that he did not know who it was, but he felt like whoever did it had thought about it for a long time,” Ms. Murdaugh’s law firm confronted him, accusing him of pocketing about $800,000 in lawyer fees that he was supposed to have deposited into the firm’s account. Murdaugh testified that he had feared an admission that he was at the kennels before the murders would cause the police to consider him a suspect. Defense lawyers also noted that the police had issued a statement in the days after the killings saying that no immediate threat to the public existed. Murdaugh was wearing when police arrived after he called 911 — it would have been covered in blood and body matter, his lawyers argued — and the DNA of an unknown man was discovered under Mrs. That was an indication, they argued, that the authorities were investigating only Mr. After denying for more than 20 months that he was at the dog kennels where his wife and son were found shot to death, Alex Murdaugh confessed that he had lied about his whereabouts. Murdaugh’s phone from the day of the killings had been overwritten. Murdaugh told his lawyer that he had been there for a few minutes, but then had left, laid down at the house, and driven to check on his ailing mother who lived about 15 minutes away. He blamed his lies to the police on paranoia spurred by opiate dependency, as well as his distrust of the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, a state investigative agency.

Alex Murdaugh, the disgraced attorney whose dynastic family had significant legal reach in parts of South Carolina's Lowcountry for decades, ...

“If he went in there and they believed him, then he would have likely been found not guilty. When he heard a verdict had been reached less than three hours after deliberations started, he suspected Murdaugh would be convicted, he said. But the verdict shows jurors did not believe Murdaugh was credible, the experts said. [argued ](https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/02/us/alex-murdaugh-trial-defense-closings-thursday/index.html)authorities did not properly examine other suspects. [video](https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/01/us/alex-murdaugh-trial-wednesday/index.html), recorded by Paul near the family’s dog kennels shortly before the time prosecutors say they were killed, captured Alex Murdaugh’s voice in the background, nearly a dozen friends and family members testified. I think they couldn’t get past the lie (about the kennel video).” But that prominence belied underlying issues, and the killings of his wife and son were Murdaugh’s lies are likely what led to the speedy decision, they said. It was an opportunity for jurors to empathize with him while he appeared to put it all on the line, confessing to his drug addiction and repeated lies during financial schemes and the murder investigation, the experts said. “In the end … Prosecutors have indicated they will seek life in prison without the possibility of parole, sparing Murdaugh the death penalty. in South Carolina’s Colleton County.

The South Carolina lawyer faces a minimum of 30 years in prison for each murder.

They called Judge Newman's decision to allow evidence related to Murdaugh's financial crimes to be included in the murder trial "erroneous". Murdaugh had been cast as a "despicable human being", he said. He stared ahead and did not react as his sentence was read. "I would never hurt my wife and I would never hurt my son," he said in brief remarks at the hearing. Judge Clifton Newman called the case "one of the most troubling" he had seen and noted Murdaugh's past "as a well-known member of the legal community". Disgraced ex-lawyer Alex Murdaugh has been sentenced to life in prison for murdering his wife and son in a case that shocked the US.

The 54-year-old disbarred South Carolina lawyer faces a sentence of 30 years to life in prison for each murder conviction.

"This defendant has fooled everyone — everyone who thought they were close to him," Waters told the jury in his closing argument. He was facing a financial reckoning, they said, that also included his liability in a court case over a fatal 2019 boating accident in which Paul, then 19, was said to be driving. Prosecutors never produced the two murder weapons used to kill Maggie and Paul, and there were no eyewitnesses. But after witnesses identified Murdaugh's voice in a cellphone video taken by Paul at the kennel around 8:45 p.m. Newman had said he would render his sentence after any victim impact statements, but prosecutor Creighton Waters began his remarks by saying the state did not have anyone who wanted to deliver a victim statement. "It's so unfortunate, because you had such a lovely family of such friendly people — including you," the judge told Murdaugh. The sentencing closes a six-week-long trial that charted Murdaugh's fall from grace. Murdaugh said repeatedly that he didn't go with his wife and son to the dog kennels where they were shot and killed, saying that he stayed in the house, and took a nap before leaving to see his ailing mother. The court session began shortly after 9:30 a.m. Thank you." "Good morning, your honor. Newman told Murdaugh that each of the punishments apply to "the rest of your natural life," adding that the sentences are consecutive.

The disgraced South Carolina lawyer was charged in the murders of his wife and son. His defense argued that investigators fabricated evidence.

In his new version of events, Murdaugh admitted being there, but he said he went back to the house minutes before 9 p.m. In his closing argument, Waters stressed to jurors that he thinks one thing was missing from the two days Murdaugh spent testifying. "You want to leave the eggs or take the eggs?" But, he said, she would be replaced so that the integrity of the trial would remain intact. Griffin began his statement with an overview of the criminal legal system, comparing the trial to an instant-replay review in college football. The court received a complaint from a member of the public saying the juror, a woman identified only as juror No. He noted that South Carolina law doesn't require the state to prove premeditation or motive in a murder case. Griffin accused the agency of a list of failures, saying the state never explained if tests were performed on hair he said was found in Maggie's fingers. Once investigators seized on the idea that tests showed high-velocity blood spatter on Alex Murdaugh's T-shirt, he added, they refused to dismiss that idea and pursued it "with vengeance." As for the lies Murdaugh admitted telling, Griffin said his client lied because "that's what addicts do." But when the state was faced with mixed results and questions over tests of Murdaugh's shirt, Griffin said, they embraced a "Mr. A defense attorney for Murdaugh sought to sow doubt about the work by police and forensics teams, saying they fell far short of preserving evidence from the crime scene.

In a case that has gripped America, the jury deliberated for less than three hours before finding Murdaugh guilty of murder at the end of a six-week trial.

Murdaugh lied about being at the kennels for 20 months before taking the stand on the 23rd day of his trial. Before he was charged with murder, Murdaugh was in jail awaiting trial on about 100 other charges ranging from insurance fraud to tax evasion. Murdaugh comes from a family that dominated the local legal scene for decades. Murdaugh called 911 and said he discovered the bodies when he returned home. South Carolina Attorney-General Alan Wilson thanked the prosecution for the past six weeks of late nights spent at a local hotel. His lawyer motioned for a mistrial, which the judge swiftly denied.

A US jury finds disgraced South Carolina attorney Alex Murdaugh guilty of murdering his wife and son on their sprawling country estate.

I would never hurt Maggie, and I would never hurt Paul — ever — under any circumstances," Murdaugh said. "Oh, what a tangled web we weave. Murdaugh had told police repeatedly after the killings that he was not at the kennels and was instead napping before he went to visit his ailing mother that night. The court heard about betrayed friends and clients, Murdaugh's failed attempt to stage his own death in an insurance fraud scheme, a fatal boat crash in which his son was implicated, the housekeeper who died in a fall in the Murdaugh home, the grisly scene of the killings and Bubba, the chicken-snatching dog. Murdaugh admitted lying to police and clients, but denied killing his wife Maggie and son Paul. - Murdaugh admitted lying to police and clients, but denied killing his wife and son

Verdict in case of prominent South Carolina lawyer accused of 2021 double homicide comes after gripping six-week trial.

It was not until state investigators were brought in, and Murdaugh confessed to embezzlement, that murder charges were eventually filed. Prosecutors argued that Murdaugh had left the estate soon after to visit his mother to help establish an alibi. But he said he drove a golf cart back to the main house, 500 yards away, before the shootings took place. Newman has discretion to pass a sentence of 30 years to life without parole for each of the murder convictions. “He may be taken away,” the judge, Clifton Newman, said as Murdaugh was led out. Murdaugh was judged guilty on two counts of murder and two weapons-related charges.

"The evidence of guilt is overwhelming," the judge said after the jury verdict was read in court.

But they were unable to find either firearm and produce them at trial. This was the same thing." The case against him was based entirely on circumstantial evidence. Reporters shouted questions, though he remained silent. He scheduled sentencing for Friday morning. Murdaugh had pleaded not guilty to killing his wife and youngest son in an attempt to conceal years of financial corruption - fraud that he himself had acknowledged in court.

The verdict came less than three hours after jurors began deliberating. It followed a six-week trial that served as a reckoning for Mr. Murdaugh, a lawyer ...

Mr. But Mr. Waters hammered Mr. Throughout the trial, Mr. Griffin addressed Mr. That confrontation, Mr. Much of the trial focused on Mr. Earlier that day, Mr. Prosecutors said Mr. The jury also found Mr. The trial was a reckoning for Mr. Prosecutors contended that Mr.

Alex Murdaugh's theft of millions of dollars was about to be revealed so he killed his wife and son to buy time to figure a way out, a prosecutor said ...

They will be able to review about 800 documents, photographs, videos of police interviews of Alex Murdaugh and other exhibits while deciding on a verdict. “He fooled Maggie and Paul, too, and they paid for it with their lives. “Always having to stay one step ahead of the game. Aided by his knowledge of how criminal cases are constructed, he hatched a clever plan to make sure they were at the family’s Colleton County property on the night they were killed, June 7, 2021, he said. It took more than a year for federal agents to hack into the young man’s locked iPhone and find it. The use of the family weapons collaborates it.