Alex Murdaugh pleads not guilty to murders of wife and son as prosecutors hint at motive

Disgraced legal dynasty heir Alex Murdaugh has pleaded not guilty to the brutal 2021 double murders of his wife and son as prosecutors hinted that his motive is tied to his string of fraud and drugs scandals.

Sporting a newly-shaved hairstyle and wearing a white face mask, the 53-year-old appeared in Colleton County Courthouse in Waltersboro on Wednesday morning for the first time since being charged with the murders of Maggie and Paul Murdaugh.

He spoke only to confirm his name and enter his not guilty plea.

Mr Murdaugh’s attorneys consented to him being held on no bond, in light of the fact he is already being held on $7m bond on other charges – an amount that the financially ruined attorney has no way of meeting.

His attorney Dick Harpootlian requested that no “alleged facts” be presented at the bond hearing, arguing that it could “pollute the jury pool” given the high-profile nature of the dramatic case.

The 53-year-old self-confessed opioid addict is accused of shooting Maggie multiple times with a rifle and Paul multiple times with a shotgun back on the night of 7 June 2021.

He then made a dramatic 911 call, claiming that he had returned home from visiting his sick father and elderly mother to find the bodies of his wife and son by the dog kennels on the family’s sprawling hunting estate in Islandton, South Carolina.

For more than a year, no arrests were made, no suspects were named and no charges brought over their killings.

The only person ever confirmed as a person of interest was Mr Murdaugh, as a slew of other investigations were launched and a string of other charges stacked up against him.

In the months after their deaths, Mr Murdaugh was arrested and charged over numerous alleged schemes including embezzling millions of dollars to fund his opioid habit and a bizarre plot where he allegedly hired a hitman to kill him.

Then – in another dramatic twist to the case – he was charged with the murders of Maggie and Paul more than 13 months on from their slayings.

A Colleton County grand jury indicted Mr Murdaugh last Thursday for two counts of murder and two counts of possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime.

Officials are remaining tight-lipped about what evidence finally led to the murder charges.

However, sources close to the investigation said that blood spatter on the 53-year-old’s clothing as well as cellphone footage placed Mr Murdaugh at the scene of at least one of his loved ones’ murders.

The source told FITS News that the high velocity blood spatter on his clothing shows he was in close contact with at least one of the victims when they were shot.

Meanwhile, Paul’s cellphone – which was discovered near his body – contained audio and video footage of Mr Murdaugh speaking to his wife just before the time that he and his mother were killed, the source said.

No motive has been given for the murders.

However, Mr Murdaugh’s finances were in secretly in tatters and Maggie was reportedly living apart from her husband at the time of her murder and had been speaking with divorce attorneys.

Paul, meanwhile, was awaiting trial on charges over the death of 19-year-old Mallory Beach in a 2019 boat crash. Paul was allegedly drunk driving a boat when he crashed it, throwing his friend Ms Beach to her death.

He was charged with boating under the influence and faced up to 25 years in prison. Rumours instantly swirled that the incident was in some way connected to Paul’s death.

Mr Murdaugh has had a spectacular fall from grace over the last year and found himself at the centre of a twisted tale involving unsolved murders, millions of dollars of allegedly embezzled funds, a suicide-for-hire plot and several mysterious deaths that are now under investigation.

The dramatic step to charge him with his wife and son’s murders marks the latest bombshell twist to the sprawling mystery that has rocked the community of Hampton County.

Three months after his wife and son’s deaths, Mr Murdaugh allegedly hired a hitman to fake his own murder.

On 4 September, the attorney called 911 claiming he was ambushed in a drive-by shooting while he was changing a tire on the side of a road in Hampton County.

Mr Murdaugh was shot in the head and taken to hospital with superficial injuries.

One day after the shooting, Mr Murdaugh entered rehab for a 20-year opioid addiction and announced he had resigned from his law firm Peters, Murdaugh, Parker, Eltzroth, & Detrick (PMPED).

Days later, his law firm partners accused him of stealing millions of dollars from its clients going back years.

The partners had confronted Mr Murdaugh about the allegations and ousted him from the firm just one day before the shooting.

Mr Murdaugh’s version of events around the shooting rapidly fell apart and he confessed to police to paying an alleged hitman to shoot and kill him in an assisted suicide plot so that his surviving son Buster could get a $10m life insurance windfall.

Both Mr Murdaugh and his alleged accomplice Curtis Smith – who the attorney had previously represented – were charged over the incident.

Mr Murdaugh was released on bond on the promise that he enter rehab for his opioid addiction.

He was then arrested on his release from rehab in October on charges of stealing funds from the wrongful death settlement over the mysterious trip and fall death of the family’s longtime housekeeper Gloria Satterfield in 2018.

Mr Murdaugh is accused of siphoning off $3.4m of the $4m settlement meant for Satterfield’s sons to a fake company called Forge.

Questions have been swirling around Satterfield’s death ever since and investigators reopened a probe into her death.

Earlier this month, officials announced plans to exhume her body.

Satterfield worked for the influential Murdaugh family for more than 20 years when she was found at the bottom of some stairs at the family’s home. She died weeks later from her injuries.

At the time, her death was regarded as an accidental fall – though her death certificate cited her manner of death as “natural”.

Mr Murdaugh reached an agreement to pay her family $4m in a wrongful death settlement – money he is now accused of swindling from his insurance company to help fund his drug habit.

An investigation was also reopened into a third mystery death connected to the Murdaugh family.

Stephen Smith, 19, was found dead in a road from blunt force trauma to the head in 2015.

His death was officially ruled a hit-and-run but the victim’s family have long doubted this version of events and said that rumours swirled in the community that a “Murdaugh boy” may have been involved.

As well as the murder charges brought Thursday, Mr Murdaugh is already facing more than 84 ciminal charges from 16 indictments around the suicide-for-hire plot and schemes to defraud the Satterfield family and other victims out of millions of dollars. He is also facing 11 civil suits.

He is being held on $7m bond at Richland County’s Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center.

Throughout the legal saga, his surviving son Buster has stood by him.

In prison phone calls leaked last month, Mr Murdaugh is heard laughing to Buster that he has “allegedly done illegal things”.

Prior to the dramatic fall from grace, Mr Murdaugh was a powerful figure in Hampton County.

For almost a century, his family members have reigned over the local justice system with his father, grandfather and great-grandfather all serving as the solicitor in the 14th Judicial Circuit solicitor’s office.