Alex Murdaugh’s surviving son testifies he was ‘destroyed’ by fatal shootings of wife, son


Image Credit:radiotimes.com

The new true crime documentary looks at the boating death of Mallory Beach and the murders of Paul Murdaugh and his mother Maggie.

Arriving on Netflix this month is Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal – the streamer’s latest true crime offering that dives into a complex set of cases and a trial that is currently ongoing.

The three-parter looks into one of South Carolina’s most prominent families, the Murdaughs, whose lives began to unravel when 19-year-old Paul Murdaugh allegedly crashed his boat, resulting in the death of his friend Mallory Beach.

Two years later, Paul and his mother Maggie were shot dead on the family estate and with Paul’s father, Alex Murdaugh, currently on trial for the double murder, there’s a lot to unpack in this ongoing web of events.

Featuring “first-hand accounts from those on the boat that fateful night” and a story of how “a century of corruption, power and cover-ups in the Low Country is brought to light”, here’s everything you need to know about the true story behind Murdaugh Murders and the latest news on the ongoing trial.

Mallory Beach was a 19-year-old from South Carolina who was killed in a fatal boat crash in February 2019.

The boat was allegedly crashed by her friend Paul Murdaugh, according to CBS News, a 19-year-old who came from a family of prominent lawyers in South Carolina who “dominated the legal landscape in the southern part of the state for 100 years”.

On 23rd February 2019, Mallory and her boyfriend Anthony Cook planned to spend the night at a house party but first met at ‘Murdaugh Island’ – the river property owned by Paul Murdaugh’s family – with the couple, Paul, his girlfriend Morgan Doughty, Anthony’s cousin Connor Cook and his girlfriend Miley Altman deciding to take the Murdaugh boat there.

According to CBS, all of the teenagers were drinking alcohol and went to the party at 7pm. Altman said that when they then left the party at midnight, “Paul insisted on driving to a bar in downtown Beaufort”.

Leaving the bar at 1am, the group boarded the boat – however Murdaugh was “acting rash” and kept leaving the wheel to fight with his girlfriend, according to Doughty’s testimony. The boat then crashed at 2:20am into the Archers Creek Bridge and Beach fell into the water.

The authorities spent eight days searching for Beach’s body and on 3rd March, volunteers found her five miles from the crash scene. Murdaugh was later indicted and charged with three felony counts of boating under the influence and causing the death of Mallory Beach as well as seriously injuring two other passengers.

Murdaugh pleaded not guilty and was awaiting his trial on bond when he was murdered on 7th June 2021, along with his mother Maggie.

According to The Post and Courier, after Murdaugh’s death, questions were raised over alleged “law enforcement missteps” in the early stages of the investigation into Beach’s death.

“Attorneys for one of the passengers asked in a recent court filing to question a group of responding officers about a possible effort to shift blame away from Murdaugh, a member of a powerful Lowcountry family,” the publication wrote in August 2021. “A state grand jury was also empaneled to examine how officers investigated the crash.”

While a conversation between a Department of Natural Resources officer and Anthony Cook showed that Cook immediately told them that Murdaugh was driving the boat, the report on the crash did not contain that piece of information and instead, according to The Post and Courier, said that Cook “wasn’t sure who was driving”.

A Beaufort deputy Jack Keener, who spoke to Murdaugh, allegedly “opted not to collect as evidence a phone Murdaugh was carrying” despite being heard saying in a recording that Murdaugh had dropped his phone in the grass, The Post and Courier also reported.

In March 2019, Beach’s family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the Murdaugh’s, listing Paul’s mother Maggie, who allegedly knew he was drunk when he went boating, and his older brother Buster, whose ID he reportedly used to buy alcohol, according to WTOC.

A judge approved a settlement between the families in January this year, with the Beach family lawyer Mark Tinsely predicting a pay out of $700,000 (£582,000) for the victims.

True story behind the Murdaugh murders:

In June 2021, Alex Murdaugh – the father of Paul – called 911 to report that he’d found his wife Maggie and son Paul shot dead outside their home in Islandton, South Carolina.

After more than a year, during which time multiple charges of financial crime were brought against Alex Murdaugh and his law licence was indefinitely suspended by the South Carolina Supreme Court, a grand jury announced an indictment against him on double murder charges for the deaths of Paul and Maggie.

Note: This article is taken from radiotimes.com

https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/documentaries/true-crime/murdaugh-murders-true-story-netflix-explained/

 

 

 

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