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The release of a three-part Netflix documentary series happened coincided with a double homicide trial in South Carolina involving one of the state’s most prominent legal dynasties. For the uninitiated, the story of what happened with the Murdaugh family is fraught with speculation and unanswered questions.
In June 2021, the unsolved killings of Margaret, aka Maggie, Murdaugh and her son Paul, shattered the immaculate image of a well-connected and respected legal family in South Carolina’s Lowcountry. Alex Murdaugh, whose father, grandfather and great-grandfather were all top prosecutors in the region spanning a collective family history of almost 90 years, has denied responsibility for their deaths.
But there is a bizarre sequence of events going back two years before Maggie and Paul were killed. Since 2015, there have been five mysterious deaths in the Murdaugh family’s orbit, culminating in the murders of Maggie and Paul outside the family’s hunting lodge. The victims were found with multiple gunshot wounds on June 7, 2021, after 911 dispatchers received a call from Murdaugh at around 10pm.
What happened to the Murdaugh family?
Alex Murdaugh. Joshua Boucher/Getty Images
What happened to the Murdaugh family? Paul and Maggie Murdaugh were shot to death late at night in June 2021. On July 14, 2022, Alex—Maggie’s husband and Paul’s father—was charged with their murder, for which he pleaded not guilty.
Alex initially told investigators he discovered them after returning from visiting his mother, who has dementia, but while on the stand during his double homicide trial, Alex admitted he’d lied about where he was on the night Paula and Maggie were killed. A key piece of the state’s evidence against Alex is video footage which was apparently captured near the dog kennels on the Murdaugh’s hunting property; his voice can be heard in the background. “Mr. Murdaugh, is that you on the kennel video at 8:44 p.m. on June 7,” defense attorney Jim Griffin asked, per CNN, “the night Maggie and Paul were murdered?”
Alex confirmed it was and explained why he’d lied on three separate occasions during interviews with investigators. “I did lie to them,” he said, blaming his addiction to opiate painkillers. “I wasn’t thinking clearly,” he added. “I don’t think I was capable of reason, and I lied about being down there, and I’m so sorry that I did.” He continued to deny responsibility for his wife and son’s murder. “I didn’t shoot my wife or my son, anytime, ever.”
What happened to Stephen Smith?
What happened to Stephen Smith? The slayings of Maggie and Paul opened up another unsolved death from 2015—that of Stephen Smith, a gay teenager whose body was found dead on a remote road in Hampton County. There are conflicting reports of what caused Smith’s death; first the family was told he died from a gunshot wound, then they were told he was beaten, then it was a hit-and-run. There were no suspects and no one has been apprehended.
In June 2021, though, a statement from the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) said the agency “has opened an investigation into the death of Stephen Smith based upon information gathered during the course of the double murder investigation of Paul and Maggie Murdaugh,” People reported. “We’ve been waiting on this forever,” Smith’s mother Sandy told ABC News 4, adding that she’d always believed her son’s death was suspicious. “Stephen’s always been put on the backburner. It’s like nobody’s looking for answers. Stephen’s had no justice.”
“At the very beginning, local law enforcement did a very poor job on this case. A very poor job on this case. Either it was a gross level of incompetence, or they were motivated by other purposes,” Mike Hemlepp, Smith family attorney, told local news outlet WJCL in January 2023. Speculation in Netflix’s Murdaugh Murders implicated Buster Murdaugh, Alex’s oldest and only surviving son, in Smith’s death, believing the two had been in a romantic relationship and were getting ready to tell Buster’s family. Smith’s final moments were when his car supposedly ran out of gas and called Buster for help. His body was found in the middle of the road miles away from his truck and highway patrol said his body “looked like it was more staged. Like the possibility of the body had been placed in the roadway, per Fox News in June 2021.
“Rumor goes Stephen felt comfortable enough to call Buster for help, and Buster just so happens to be in the area on the way from a softball tournament with his friend. I believe that he picked Stephen up and was fooling Stephen into thinking they were taking him home, but I think they got a little way down the road and that’s when it all started to unravel,” Smith’s best friend Olivia told Netflix.
What happened to the Murdaugh’s housekeeper, Gloria Satterfield?
What happened to the Murdaugh’s housekeeper, Gloria Satterfield? In February 2018, Gloria Satterfield fell down the steps of the family home. She suffered a stroke a few weeks later and died. No autopsy was performed and Satterfield’s death certificate claimed she died of natural causes and resulted from an accidental trip and fall. Sounds benign enough, but according to multiple criminal indictments and lawsuits, Alex and two other men, fellow attorney Cory Fleming and banker Chad Westendorf conspired to steal Satterfield’s $4.3 million insurance policy by misleading her sons and diverting all the funds to Alex through a fake business called Forge. Satterfield’s insurance scam is just one out of more than 100 financial crimes Alex is accused of committing over the course of 11 years, including fraud, money laundering, embezzlement and tax evasion.
Alex was also observed to be acting suspiciously around Satterfield’s death, including arriving before EMTs and insisting he’d heard her say his dogs caused her fall which contradicted Satterfield’s own statement that she had no idea what caused her fall.
What happened to Mallory Beach?
Mallory Beach, Morgan Doughty. Courtesy of Netflix
On February 24, 2019, friends Paul Murdaugh (Alex’s now-murdered son), Mallory Beach, Morgan Doughty, Miley Altman and Connor Cook and Mallory’s boyfriend Anthony Cook—all around the age of 19—were drinking alcohol on Paul’s family’s boat.
After attending a house party and subsequent barhopping down the Beaufort, the friends boarded Paul’s boat for the last time at around 1.15 am according to CCTV footage of the dock. Paul was visibly drunk and, according to Miley’s statement to police, the group started arguing with him and refused anyone who asked for him to let them off.
Around 2.20 am, the boat crashed into the Archers Creek Bridge. Mallory was thrown from the vessel and into the dark water. Connor called 911 and, in the Netflix documentary Murdaugh Murders, you can hear Mallory’s friends screaming her name in the background of the 911 call recording. Then-Beaufort County Deputy Sherriff Stephen Domino was among the first to arrive and noticed Anthony in distress. He told the crime show 48 Hours that Anthony was agitated as Paul walked off from the boat. “He actually tried to rush through me to get to Paul,” Domino said, “because I guess he saw [Paul] smiling … and it just set him off again.” In dashcam footage obtained by Netflix, you can hear Anthony screaming at Paul: “You’re f—ing smiling like it’s f—ing funny? My f—ing girlfriend is gone. Hope you rot in f—ing hell.”
At the end of an eight-day search involving rescue boats, divers and a helicopter, Mallory’s body was found by volunteers about five miles downriver from the crash scene. The coroner found she had died of blunt force trauma to the head and drowning. In March 2019, Mallory’s family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the Murdaughs, alleging that Paul’s mother Maggie (who is now also deceased), knew her son was drunk when the group went boating and noting that Buster, Paul’s older brother, had supplied his ID so that the teens could purchase alcohol.
On April 18, 2019, on what would have been Mallory’s 20th birthday, Paul was charged with three felony counts of boating under the influence, including causing the death of Mallory and seriously injuring two other passengers. Paul pleaded not guilty and was out on bail awaiting trial. He would never get his time in court as he was murdered on June 7, 2021. In January 2023, a judge approved a settlement between the Beach and Murdaugh families, having removed Maggie and Buster from the suit.
Alex Murdaugh’s double homicide trial began on January 23, 2023. Buster testified his father sounded “normal” on the night of June 2021, about 20 minutes after when prosecutors say the murders took place, but that his father was “destroyed” and “heartbroken” after the killings.
Netflix’s Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal is available to stream now.
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