In the state of South Carolina, the name Murdaugh was synonymous with power. For four generations, the Murdaughs had established themselves as one of the most prestigious and prominent legal families in the state's history. As the new series streaming on HBO Max tells the story in Low Country: The Murdaugh Dynasty, they were South Carolina's royal family of jurisprudence going back over one hundred years to Randolph Murdaugh, who served as the Solicitor General (the equivalent of a district attorney) starting in 1920 and the family owned a massive civil law practice that dates all the way back to 1910. But all good things come to an end.
When the crown was handed to Richard "Alex" Murdaugh as the most recent high-powered lawyer of his name, it ended with a resounding crash that exposed a litany of family secrets and criminal activity. The name Murdaugh very quickly took on a very different connotation. What took a century to build came crumbling down in just 10 years.
Current Charges and Ongoing Investigations
When Alex Murdaugh fell, he fell hard. He was arrested and charged with close to 90 crimes dating back to 2014. As of right now, he is sitting in Richland County's Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center on a $7 million bond that he cannot make. Of the 88 charges he faces, the most recent were filed in July and August 2022 and include nine counts of breach of trust with fraudulent intent, seven counts of computer crime, four counts of money laundering, and one count of forgery.
In all, he is accused of stealing at least $8.5 million, from people he was hired to represent — $295,000 of which was from his own brother. Prosecutors allege that Murdaugh wrote an estimated 437 checks to people in order to avoid reporting income to the government. But these white-collar crimes are really just the tip of the iceberg in an unraveling of epic proportions.
The Murdaughs Bullied Anyone Who Crossed Them
Many in the rural Lowland area were happy to see the Murdaughs fall from grace. They owned over 1700 acres in Hampton County, wielded their power without much regard, and leveraged their family name in sordid and unscrupulous ways. In short, they were bullies. People were afraid of crossing them and as the patriarch, the now 54-year-old Alex Murdaugh oversaw everything. So when he came under the microscope of South Carolina law enforcement himself for various charges ranging from embezzlement and insurance fraud to the murder of his estranged wife, Maggie, and their 22-year-old son, Paul, not many tears were shed.
Facing Murder Charges
In January 2023, Richard Murdaugh will face trial for the 2021 shooting murders of his wife and son that allegedly took place outside one of the family homes, a hunting lodge in Colleton County, South Carolina. There are currently two other investigations going on involving Murdaugh and the murder of their long-time family housekeeper, Gloria Satterfield in a purported trip-and-fall accident in the Murdaugh home and an unsolved homophobic hate-crime murder of teenager Stephen Smith that took place in 2015. He is suspected of orchestrating the cover-up of both of the deaths in what are still ongoing investigations. He has pled not guilty to all the charges.
If he is convicted, Murdaugh will face in excess of 500 years in prison as each of the 88 crimes levied against him are felonies. The disgraced former lawyer recently admitted in front of a judge that a 20-year opioid addiction contributed to his illicit behavior and is expected to appeal any guilty verdict. It's an astonishing and lengthy downward spiral for a man that was handed the keys to the kingdom of the Lowlands of South Carolina and lost it all.
Low Country: The Murdaugh Dynasty is now available to stream on HBO Max.