A 911 call from a father, a phone video, and the 22-month wait for a verdict
The 911 call came on June 7, 2021.
Alex Murdaugh told the dispatcher he had found the bodies of his wife, Maggie, 52, and his son, Paul, 22.
They were near the dog kennels on the family's hunting estate in Colleton County, South Carolina.
What exactly he said in that call is not in the record.
Only that he claimed to have found them.
The two victims had been killed with two different firearms.
A shotgun and a rifle, both linked to the Murdaugh family.
The Murdaugh name carried weight in South Carolina's Lowcountry.
It was a legal dynasty, generations of prosecutors and lawyers.
Paul had been involved in a 2019 boating accident that killed a young woman, Mallory Beach.
He had been accused of driving under the influence.
His legal troubles were pending.
For over a year, investigators pursued theories.
Was it retaliation over the boat crash?
Was it an enemy of the family?
Was it something else entirely?
The theories circled.
The record does not establish what happened in the minutes between the phone video and the discovery of the bodies.
That gap would become the case.
THE ROADSIDE AMBUSH
The 911 call had not yet answered the question of who fired the weapons.
In September 2021, Alex Murdaugh was shot in the head in what he claimed was a roadside ambush.
He survived.
He later admitted to orchestrating the shooting with a former client, Curtis Smith.
The admitted purpose was to create an alibi and allow his surviving son, Buster, to collect a $10 million life insurance policy.
The revelation shattered Alex's credibility.
It also redirected the murder investigation toward him.
Investigators had spent months on theories that the killings were connected to Paul's pending legal troubles from the 2019 boat crash.
Those theories circled.
This was different.
A man who had claimed to be a victim was now an admitted plotter.
The record does not establish the exact motive for the murders.
The prosecution would later argue that financial crimes provided a motive — that is an interpretation, not a documented fact.
That argument would come later.
In July 2022, Alex Murdaugh was indicted for the murders of his wife and son.
He was arrested and held without bond.
The indictment named two counts of murder and two counts of possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime.
The roadside ambush had been a performance.
The record had established that.
What happened in the minutes between the phone video and the discovery of the bodies remained a gap.
That gap would become the case.
THE PHONE VIDEO
The video came from Paul's phone.
It showed the family at the kennels, a mundane moment, dogs and small talk.
Prosecutors presented it as evidence that Alex Murdaugh was there, at the time of the murders.
The footage placed him with Maggie and Paul moments before the killings.
Forensic evidence added weight to the timeline.
Gunshot residue was found on Alex's clothing.
A rifle and a shotgun, both linked to the family, were connected to the murders.
The defense argued the evidence was circumstantial.
They called Alex a devoted family man who could not have done this.
The prosecution answered with the timeline, and the video was its hinge.
What happened in the minutes between the video and the discovery of the bodies is not established by the record.
That gap remained the case's central question.
Investigators also uncovered a pattern of financial crimes.
Alex had been stealing from his law firm and his clients, the prosecutors said.
The motive, they argued, was distraction: the murders would draw attention from an impending financial collapse.
It was a theory built on ledgers and phone data as much as on ballistics.
The defense countered that the financial crimes were real but separate, a man's collapse, not a killer's plan.
The record does not resolve that argument.
It resolves the timeline.
The video showed him there.
The gunshot residue placed him in the vicinity of the weapons.
The financial record gave the prosecution a reason.
The defense gave the jury a character, but the prosecution gave them a sequence.
A sequence with one missing stretch of minutes.
THE TRIAL
The trial began in January 2023 in Colleton County, with Judge Clifton Newman presiding.
Alex Murdaugh was charged with two counts of murder and two counts of possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime.
The prosecution, led by Creighton Waters, presented over 75 witnesses over several weeks.
The defense, led by Dick Harpootlian and Jim Griffin, argued that Alex was not present at the kennels.
They argued the murders were committed by someone else, possibly connected to the boat crash or drug debts.
That was the argument.
That was not the proof.
The record does not establish that either the boat crash or drug debts led to the killings.
In a rare move, Alex Murdaugh took the stand in his own defense.
He denied involvement.
He claimed he had lied about his whereabouts because of paranoia and drug addiction.
He had lied about the roadside shooting too.
He had admitted that.
The jury had the phone video.
They had the sequence with one missing stretch of minutes.
On March 2, 2023, the jury found Alex Murdaugh guilty on all four counts.
He was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole.
Judge Newman delivered a scathing rebuke, telling Murdaugh he had lied and manipulated the system for years.
Twenty-two months after the 911 call, the verdict landed.
It was final. It was heavy.
The wait was over.
AND THE STORY STILL ISN'T OVER
Alex Murdaugh is currently incarcerated at the South Carolina Department of Corrections, serving two life sentences.
He has filed appeals, citing alleged jury tampering by a court clerk.
As of late 2024, his convictions have been upheld.
That is not final, though. Further legal steps may be pending.
The appeals are ongoing. The outcome is not settled.
Beyond the murder convictions, Murdaugh has pleaded guilty to numerous financial crimes.
Fraud. Money laundering. Tax evasion.
He has been sentenced to additional prison time for those.
He has also admitted to orchestrating the 2021 roadside shooting.
That admission came after he had claimed it was an ambush.
It was an alibi. It was a lie.
Buster Murdaugh has maintained his innocence.
He has largely stayed out of the public eye.
The family legacy is dismantled.
The 2019 boat crash case involving Paul Murdaugh was settled in 2022.
The family of Mallory Beach received a settlement from the Murdaugh family and others.
That civil case closed. The criminal case continues.
Documentaries, books, and podcasts have multiplied.
Each one retells the timeline. Each one adds a theory.
The theories are not the record. The record is the verdict.
The verdict was upheld as of late 2024.
The appeals are not over.
The story is not over.
Advertisement
You may also like
The severed head in the canal, the confessed killer who was never charged, and the file police closed twice
The drainage canal ran along the Florida Turnpike near Vero Beach, 120 miles from where the boy had vanished. The head was found on…
The trucker's anonymous letters that named his own victims
The letters arrived unsigned, except for a circle with two dots and a curve. A smiley face. They were sent to the Oregonian and…
The Green River Killer’s confession count is 71. Why are only 48 convictions official?
Gary Leon Ridgway was a truck painter from Auburn, Washington. In November 2001, DNA evidence linked him to several victims, and he was arrested.…
The doctor with a scalpel and a secret that haunted Eliot Ness
The first body was found on September 5, 1934, in Kingsbury Run, a ravine that cut through Cleveland. He was a man, and no…
The slow-motion Bronco chase that began after O.J. Simpson was charged with murder
The Bronco drifted down the freeway at 35 miles an hour, a white speck trailed by a line of police cars. Al Cowlings was…
The Zodiac cipher that took 51 years to crack — and still gave no name
In December 2020, a team of private codebreakers solved the Zodiac's "340 cipher" — a cryptogram mailed to the *San Francisco Chronicle* in 1969.…