Who is the real Alex Murdaugh, the man who wrecked a South Carolina legal dynasty?
Who is Richard "Alex" Murdaugh, the now-disbarred attorney who utterly disgraced and ultimately destroyed a South Carolina legal dynasty and faces more than 100 criminal charges, including indictments that he murdered his wife and child?
To better understand this accused killer and how he was allegedly able to steal more than $8.7 million from people who trusted him and his family name, you have to look back several generations, then forward to the life of prestige and power that he inherited.
A headline in the Oct. 10, 1973, edition of The Hampton County Guardian spoke of high hopes for the continuation of a dynasty: “4th Generation Murdaugh in Court.”
The story reported that 5-year-old jury boy “Alec” Murdaugh went on duty that Monday during Hampton County General Sessions Court to draw names for the jury panel, just as his daddy had once done. His grandfather, Randolph “Buster” Murdaugh Jr., was Solicitor at the time and his father, Randolph III, was an assistant solicitor, making him the fourth generation of the family “in action” in the Hampton County Courthouse.
For three generations, the Randolph Murdaugh solicitor trilogy developed legal and political power as back-to-back solicitors of the 14th Judicial Circuit, while expanding its wealth and reputation at the family’s century-old, powerhouse personal injury law firm in Hampton.
But then along came Richard Alexander Murdaugh, and what had taken his family a hundred years to build went spiraling into disgrace and infamy in less than three years.
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Alex Murdaugh: A life of power, prestige and privilege
Richard Alexander Murdaugh was the third of four children, and the second son, born in May 1968 to Randolph Murdaugh III and Elizabeth “Libby” Alexander Murdaugh, a career teacher and later school board chairperson, according to the family's history in From the Salkehatchie to the Savannah. Like the eldest son, Randolph IV, he followed in the giant legal footprints that tread before him.
Murdaugh, commonly called “Alec” by his family and friends, and later “Big Red,” by his wife and her circle of friends, enjoyed the life built for him by three generations of talented, successful attorneys and prosecutors. His childhood was spent in the deep woods of the Lowcountry exploring exclusive hunting lands with his elders and their well-connected friends during the fall and winter or boating at the family riverside and beachfront retreats in the warmer months.
Like his father and grandfather, he did not attend private school with the children of other wealthy families but received his education in the public schools – that’s where the people were, the future voters and potential jurors. The Murdaughs did not separate themselves from the community but immersed themselves in it, and it paid off in the forms of relationships and connections.
Dr. James Tuten, a Varnville native who is now a college history professor living in Pennsylvania, grew up in the same affluent Varnville neighborhood where Alex was raised. Commonly called “The Pines,” it was a quiet, charming little section of town the Tutens jokingly called “a rough neighborhood” because their neighbors included lawyers, bankers, and judges.
Tuten and Murdaugh attended public school each year from Jack in The Box Kindergarten to 1986, when they graduated Wade Hampton High School together.
“Alec always had a big personality, but I think all those Murdaughs do,” Tuten said. “He was kind of high energy, kind of loud, even as a kid. He was always the center of attention.”
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But it was an uneasy relationship with Alex, he added, because the future attorney had many sides to his personality, depending on the people he was around, and he would often treat neighborhood kids quite differently when in a crowd or at school.
In high school, Alex escorted the popular, pretty girls that everyone wanted to talk to and be seen with. In 1986 alone, his senior year, he was voted Wittiest, Best All Around, and Most Athletic. Tall and athletic even as a teen, he was a three-sport athlete, most notably playing Red Devil football. In high school yearbook photos, the redheaded jock is often pictured in a red football jersey with a cute coed by his side, and as an upperclassman he was named Prom King.
In an age when corporal punishment by a wooden paddle was still allowed and quite common, Tuten recalls an amusing incident where he, Alex, and two other high schoolers were sent to the assistant principal, Coach Phil Strother, for a paddling. While Tuten and the other boys had accepted their fate, Alex began pleading with the coach, who was known for his firm yet fair hand with a paddle, and asking for mercy.
Even after the first lick, the solicitor’s son kept pleading and defending his case.
“I knew right then he was going to be a lawyer,” Tuten added. “The verdict had come down, but he was doing his best to get a different verdict, or have the sentence commuted.”
Alex was definitely part of the popular “in crowd” in small-town Hampton, said another high school peer.
“His name got him that,” said Ginger Harriot Hadwin, a younger sister of the late Gloria Satterfield (one of Murdaugh's alleged victims and his former employee) who also attended Wade Hampton with Murdaugh. “He wasn’t in my circle, but everybody knew who Alex was.”
While the solicitor’s son was popular with many, he wasn’t so well thought of by other peers, many of whom are still reluctant to speak openly because of the perceived power of the Murdaugh name and their legal connections. One schoolmate, who asked to be unnamed, described Murdaugh as “unchained,” with “no sense of ever being held accountable for anything.”
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In interviews with the author, more than one classmate, who asked not to be identified, described Alex as a bully, a kid with a big name who treated those he considered his equals one way, but reserved a much harsher, meaner treatment for those he considered in a class below him: the poorer class students, the less athletic boys. These kinds of people weren’t just expendable to him – they were often targets of his hazing and bullying.
Hadwin also had negative high school memories involving young Murdaugh.
A popular party spot of that era was the Varnville Swimming Pool, where generations of teens and young adults gathered for dances on the second-story pavilion above the pool. Hadwin recalls an incident during one of those dances when Murdaugh was drunk and acting obnoxious, and almost got into an altercation with her brother, Eric.
The Murdaugh family owned a large stretch of ancestral family land just outside Varnville called the “Almeda Tract,” and Alex and his brothers were known for their legendary parties there. Everybody who was anybody in high school social circles could be found partying at “Almeda” on Friday nights after the football games. Reports in the halls of Wade Hampton High often told of kegs of beer, bonfires, loud music and more than one lusty teen getting lucky in the back of someone’s car.
Following the Murdaugh family ‘playbook’ of traditions
The Randolph Murdaugh attorneys had their traditions for more than three generations, and Alex closely followed the pages of the Murdaugh “playbook” – until he was charged with murdering his family, that is.
According to family histories, newspaper archives, and background research by USA TODAY journalists, Alex was the fourth generation of Murdaughs to attend the University of South Carolina and then its law school, was the fourth Murdaugh to play football for the Gamecocks. Along with his brother, Randolph IV, he was the fourth generation to practice law in the 14th Circuit of South Carolina and the fourth to serve the 14th Circuit Solicitor’s Office, albeit as a part-time, volunteer assistant solicitor.
Murdaugh received a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Political Science from USC in 1990, a Juris Doctorate Degree in May 1994 from the USC School of Law and was admitted to the Hampton County Bar, the South Carolina Bar, and the American Bar Association in November of 1994. The same year he also joined the S.C. Association of Justice and the American Association of Justice.
With fresh degrees on the wall, Murdaugh briefly went to work with his college friend and roommate, Cory Fleming, at Moss, Kuhn & Fleming, P.A., in Beaufort, before continuing with the Murdaugh family legacy in Hampton.
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Alex Murdaugh returns home to fulfill destiny at family firm
Alex and Maggie met as undergraduates at the Columbia campus. They married in 1993 while Alex was still a law student.
Alex and Maggie’s first son, named after Alex, goes by Buster in honor of his great-grandfather. Richard Alexander “Buster” Murdaugh Jr. was born in 1996. Paul came three years later.
The family made its way back to the Murdaugh’s hometown in Hampton County, and the young lawyer took his place in the family business. He became a partner at Peters, Murdaugh, Parker, Eltzroth & Detrick (PMPED), the firm founded in 1910 by his great-grandfather, the first Randolph Murdaugh. He also served as a volunteer, part-time prosecutor for the 14th Judicial Circuit, often prosecuting cases alongside his father, just as the Murdaugh father-son duos of previous generations had done, according to the 14th Circuit Solicitor's Office.
S.C. civil court records indicate that, like other PMPED attorneys, the second son of Randolph III handled many types of personal injury cases in both state and federal courts, from products liability and trip-and-fall cases in big box department stores to vehicle and tire defect lawsuits and even wrongful deaths. In 2021, he took on a case involving a teenager about to start college who was seriously injured in a 2018 boat crash in the Savannah River near Allendale County—one year before his son was charged in a boating crash that left college student Mallory Beach dead.
Alex followed the Murdaugh playbook in other areas as well, and was active in legal, political and community circles, as were his ancestors. He served on the boards of a nearby community college and a local nonprofit, the Arnold Fields Community Endowment, and was a member of the Hampton County chapter of the NAACP. From 1999 to 2006, he also served as chairman of the Hampton County Democratic Party, then served as vice chair for several more years.
Alex and other members of his family were frequent and generous political donors, together dishing out more than $110,000 to South Carolina politicians in just the last decade, while the PMPED law firm’s donations nearly doubled that. Murdaugh himself donated to state-level politicians as well as small-town council members and county sheriffs – Democrat and Republican alike. He gave money to S.C. Gov. Henry McMaster, 14th Circuit Solicitor Duffie Stone, and S.C. Senator Richard Harpootlian, the criminal defense lawyer who defended his son after the fatal boat crash and now defends him. Alex was by far the biggest political donor in his family, doling out more than $90,000 to politicians from 2008 to 2020 while reporting under different versions of his name. Records on the state ethics website show Murdaugh donating money under the names Richard, Richard Alexander, R. Alexander, Alexander, and Alex Murdaugh.
While such political contributions are legal and a common practice in legal and business circles, they are often criticized by some as attempts to buy power, influence, or access to state and local officials.
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The sun-soaked life of a Lowcountry SC lawyer
For years, Alex Murdaugh’s salary as law firm partner appeared to provide a sun-soaked, sportsman's lifestyle that could only be set in a place like South Carolina’s Lowcountry: hunting and fishing, boating, and golfing, attending oyster roasts and formal balls with the same comfort and ease.
Alex owned at least five watercrafts, state property records. The family kept a beach house on nearby Edisto Island, and he co-owned three wooded tracts and seven islands amid the waterways of Beaufort County, according to property records. The Murdaugh families enjoyed a common river house folks called “Murdaugh Island.”
Alex was also a member and shareholder in an exclusive hunting club, the Green Swamp Club in Tillman, say court records. Local hunters jokingly say that you can’t just buy a spot in Green Swamp, someone rich must die and leave it to you in their will, and there may be some truth in that.
For a time, Alex and his family lived at 515 Holly Street Extension in Hampton, then later moved to a vast estate that straddled Hampton and Colleton counties, a place they called Moselle, and Maggie Murdaugh was the always generous host and energetic lady of the house.
Their 1,770-acre homestead is a white mansion tucked behind a brick gate. Trucks kicked up dirt on the drive. Tractors chugged in the field. They organized dove, duck, and deer hunts on their land, invited friends, allies and people they wanted to be allies.
The Murdaughs kept a walk-in deer cooler, stocked with Natural Light beer, on the property, too. Anyone was welcome to grab one after a hunt. That included Paul, a student at the University of South Carolina, and his underage friends, according to allegations in a civil suit deposition.
Paul Murdaugh was an avid hunter. He kept licenses to hunt deer, turkey and waterfowl. He fished, and he boated. He liked to be out on the water.
It was a sun-soaked life fit for an heir to the Murdaugh legal empire, but dark clouds soon emerged over the 14th Judicial Circuit. In 2019, a late-night joyride would upend the idyllic life on the Murdaugh compound.
Alex Murdaugh's fall from grace, the end of an era
By now, most of America has heard or read the details, the allegations, the criminal charges. Those who follow the news in the English-speaking world have likely read about the 2019 Beaufort County boat crash that killed Mallory Beach, 19, of Hampton, and began killing the Murdaugh family reputation.
Since then, Murdaugh has been sued in civil court a dozen times and indicted on more than 100 criminal charges by the S.C. State Grand Jury. He has been charged with conspiracy in a suicide plot, with fraud, tax evasion, drug trafficking and even the June 7, 2021, shooting deaths of Paul and Maggie. He has been accused of allowing his underaged children to drink and endanger lives, and he has even admitted to having a drug addiction.
"I made a terrible decision that I regret, that I'm sorry for, and quite frankly I'm embarrassed about," Murdaugh said during a 2021 bond hearing, adding, "I want to repair as much of the damage as I can, and repair as many of the relationships as I can."
But through it all, Murdaugh has denied killing his family members, crimes which he will face before a Colleton County jury beginning Monday, Jan. 23, in a trial that is expected to last for weeks and draw international publicity.
Today, the public life of Alex, Maggie and Paul Murdaugh linger in the family photographs splashed across magazines and newscasts, tabloids and blogs.
There’s the couple huddled at the back of a boat, Maggie bundled in a beach towel, smiling as the sun glimmers behind them. There are the parents posing with their two sons on a basketball court, decked out in University of South Carolina apparel, and arms wrapped around each other.
"Alex wants his family, friends and everyone to know that he did not have anything to do with the murders of Maggie and Paul. He loved them more than anything in the world," read a statement from Murdaugh’s attorneys after his murder indictments in July 2022.
As more evidence and details are brought to light in court, the world may soon learn even more about Alex Murdaugh.
Sources: This article cites facts based on newspaper archives, Hampton County local history books, background checks by USAT Network journalists, property and court records, as well as interviews and personal observations by the author, who grew up with members of the Murdaugh family and attended schools with them.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Who is Alex Murdaugh? Prestigious, wealthy, accused murderer
