The Dark World of Alex Murdaugh | Millionaire Murders | Forensic Files

[theme music] JOHN CONRAD: The murders themselves occurred in a place called Moselle, in the low country,
here in South Carolina. JOHN MONK: It's a region of low lying swamps, Spanish moss hanging from trees.
And it's pretty romantic and kind of a frightening place to be at night. KENNY KENSEY: The property is 1,700 acre,
sportsman's paradise, with a really, really nice residence in the middle of that property.
It's a place that most people would only be lucky enough to visit, much less to call it home.
[line dialling] RYAN NEIL: Alex Murdaugh called 911. He starts the phone call by saying
that I need help because my wife and son have been shot. They keep him on the phone for a little while,
talking to him about the incident and what he can recall. They also talked to him through about rendering aid.
And he basically tells them that he can't render aid, that they're both deceased.
During the call, he tells the 911 operator that I'm going to go back to the house.
And I'm going to get a gun for my own protection. Then you can hear, on the call, you
can hear the door chimes on the vehicle and everything else. He goes back to the house and then goes back to the scene.
And he is standing by until deputies get there. [sirens wailing] CREIGHTON WATERS: The Murdaughs lifestyle
was a very wealthy one. They had a beach house in Edisto, which is a very nice and fairly wealthy beach community.
They had the Moselle property. And they traveled a fair amount. They were generally known.
And Alex was generally known as one of the richest, most powerful charismatic lawyers in town.
They had a nice house. And they owned several properties, including that 1,700 acre Moselle and a nice beach house.
They certainly lived a very wealthy lifestyle. JOHN MONK: The Murdaughs weren't just any family.
Alex Murdaugh was a fourth generation member of a very powerful, political, social, and legal dynasty
in South Carolina, which started in 1910 when his great grandfather, Randolph Murdaugh,
founded the Murdaugh Law Firm. And in 1920, Randolph Murdaugh became what's called the solicitor or chief elected prosecutor.
And that's just not any job. As chief elected prosecutor over five county region,
the prosecutor is in charge of all the criminal cases and interacts with sheriffs
and other elected officials. KENNY KENSEY: Very powerful. I would probably compare their connections to--
the only ones I could compare it to is probably the Clintons. Quite a following here in the south, in South Carolina
and very connected. RYAN NEIL: Alex is one of three sons to Randolph Murdaugh. Alec married Maggie.
And they had two children, one being Buster, who is the oldest. And Paul being the youngest.
Paul was more of a free spirit. He was an undergrad. I don't think he had any plans to be an attorney in the future.
The aspect of the Murdaugh lifestyle he enjoyed the most was the farming aspect of Moselle.
That's probably along the lines of what he wanted to do in the future. CREIGHTON WATERS: He loved to be on that property.
Wherever he went, he always had a shotgun and a rifle with him. And then Maggie was very much a doting mother.
She was not one who had a job. She was a homemaker and lived a life of luxury, I think.
BLANCA SIMPSON: Alex had this personality that would lure you in. You he made you feel like, you were his friend.
ALL: (SINGING) Happy birthday, dear Creighton Happy birthday to you. MAN: Thank you all so much.
BLANCA SIMPSON: She just brought you in. He had that personality, that southern gift of gab,
I guess you can call it. So it was hard for you not to like him. JOHN MONK: Alex and Maggie Murdaugh,
with their trappings of wealth, and the prominence, and prestige in the community, I mean, they were people,
if you got in trouble, they could help you. JOHN CONRAD: Alex, Paul, and Maggie, quoting Alex,
all met for dinner at Moselle. They had eaten dinner. He went and sat on a couch and laid down
and actually fell asleep for a couple of hours after dinner. He got up around 9:00 ish, something like that.
And he wanted to go check on his mother. He spent about 45 minutes at his mom's house, visiting with her.
And then he drove home. And he went to the main house first, noticed that Paul and Maggie were still not at the house.
And then decided, well, I'll drive on down to the kennels. And very quickly discovered their two bodies
and then called 911. SAVANNA GOUDE: The police arrive at Moselle. It's very dark there, a good distance away from the house.
I wouldn't want to walk that far, especially at night. I think it may have rained earlier.
It's kind of wet out there. RYAN NEIL: One of the challenges we have whenever we arrive on scene is that we're not controlling
that scene initially. We have to rely on the local jurisdiction to control the scene until our arrival.
At that point, they had allowed family members to gather. There were attorneys from the law firm there as well.
And they were all pretty close to the crime scene. From Maggie's body, they were probably within 40 yards.
And they were all parked in their vehicles around that area. KENNY KENSEY: The crime scene where Maggie and Paul were
killed, several hundred yards from the main home, it was a dog kennel, where hunting dogs were kept.
It had eight or nine runs, real nice kennel. And then adjoining that was an area.
And I called it the feed room, where you would keep all of your medications, and food, and that kind of thing for your canines.
Paul was in the doorway of that feed room right outside the kennel. And Maggie was not far away in front of Paul and to the left.
And she was face down. And Paul was face down. And Paul's cell phone fell out of his pocket.
And what's your son's first name? You said Paul. Paul Terry Murdaugh. What are they covering him up?
Paul was shot very close, not a contact wound, but a near contact wound to the middle of the chest
with a double ought buckshot. And those buckshot-- the reason we know it was close
is because they didn't spread. They entered as one in the middle of his chest. It traveled underneath his skin and exited under his arm.
And at that time, Paul, probably in shock, walked several feet toward the door. And when he cleared the door from his shoulders
up, at that time, he was shot in the left arm, almost contact once again. And the shot went in, out, in.
And his brain was lacerated. And it ejected his brain. And that's where he came to rest.
Maggie had a through and through in her thigh. She had a through and through in her wrist.
She had an abrasion on her abdomen. And we surmised she had a bad injury to her left chest area.
And we believe that was a continuation of one where she was down and shot from behind.
And it actually abrased her stomach, did the damage to her chest, and then entered her head.
RYAN NEIL: Our crime scene unit arrived on scene. And they're now tasked with processing
of the crime scene for us. While they're processing the crime scene, our agents are doing their initial interviews of family
that's on scene, friends, first responding deputies, and also Alex that night. They photographed inside of each room or different angles.
They do overalls or what we call general pictures of the whole scene. And then they start photographing individual items.
And that's things that they see, such as blood or shell casings. They photograph the bodies, the vehicles.
But two items are specifically missing, and that's both firearms. We know we have two guns that we're dealing with.
And both of those are missing. The first was buckshot. The second was steel shot.
So there are 100 and some odd pellets in the second shot. There's only a dozen in the first shot
and much smaller the second shots. SAVANNA GOUDE: Maggie didn't die instantly. KENNY KENSEY: The weapon that was used to kill
Ms. Maggie is very effective. And you can just tell because it wasn't effective because the shooter had to shoot her so many times.
She was moving. I'm not saying she was fighting, but she was moving to get away from him or to at least put some distance
between she and the shooter. If an ambulance could have been called, maybe her life could have been saved.
Well, the pathologist concluded that this was obviously a homicide. When we met with her, we kind of discussed how Maggie may have
been positioned when she was shot in different times to figure out how that happened.
JOHN CONRAD: And so death had certainly occurred within the previous few hours of law enforcement arriving.
They didn't occur earlier that day. It was sometime that night. SAVANNA GOUDE: So the scene was finished, processed earlier
that night or in the morning. And then it was released. In the next steps in the investigation,
they're really just trying to figure out what happened out there. Who could have done something like this?
KENNY KENSEY: You've got this prominent attorney from a prominent family. And everyone knew the Murdaugh name.
So we knew that the mother and one of the sons had been brutally murdered. And you couldn't turn the television on that you
didn't see something about it. So we knew they were brutally murdered. We knew that SLED was involved and possibly other agencies.
And knew that this was going to be a big deal. JOHN CONRAD: I think the date was June 7 of 2021.
I come in to work. And Creighton, my boss, says, you know, so Paul and Maggie were shot last night.
And I'm like, holy cow. That's pretty ridiculous. Our first thought was, well, Paul Murdaugh was
involved in a boating accident. This is some sort of revenge for the boat case because one young lady tragically died.
KENNY KENSEY: Paul had been under a lot of stress with the boat wreck. And the reality is Paul was probably going to do some jail
time, some prison time. CREIGHTON WATERS: It was about 2:00 AM, I believe, on a February night.
It was about 40 degrees. And Paul was in a boat that was owned by Alex. RYAN NEIL: The Murdaugh family owns property
on the Chichester River. And Paul and a group of friends, three boys and three girls--
so Paul and his girlfriend, Anthony and his girlfriend, and the other guy and his girlfriend.
They had left the Chichester property and had gone over to Beaufort by water, to an oyster roast.
And after the oyster roast, they were leaving there, where they had been consuming alcohol.
And then they stop in downtown Beaufort at one of the day docks. And then gone to a bar, had a few more drinks.
And the allegations were was that Paul had been drinking heavily and was driving the boat at a high rate of speed
and in the dark. JOHN CONRAD: And people were shouting at him to sit down. And he's yelling at them, I'm the one who owns this boat.
I'm going to be driving, things like that. And the boat's going faster and faster.
And it crashes into the side of a bridge, several miles from across the bay and up a creek.
It took the EMTs and police awhile to get there because it was night. It was dark.
It was confusing. RYAN NEIL: So the young lady that was missing was Mallory Beach.
And that Mallory, when they hit the bridge, she was ejected from the boat. And they attempted to search for her,
but they could not find her. Mallory was missing for almost a week and a half before her body was located.
JOHN MONK: Paul was still quite drunk and quite obnoxious. He was taken to Beaufort Hospital.
And a deputy had to ride in the ambulance with him because he was being so unruly and rowdy.
We had heard some things about Alex's behavior in the hospital, where all the kids and Paul were taken
after the boating accident. He had supposedly been very pushy, had tried to tell some of the other kids,
maybe, hey, don't talk to the cops, that kind of thing. And his concern was-- and the whole issue in that case
was who was driving the boat. And obviously, our theory was and I would say still is, Paul was driving.
But that was something that was very much on Alex's mind that night, was to prevent anybody telling law enforcement
who was driving the boat. And that was what he was trying to do in the hospital that night.
RYAN NEIL: Upon admission to the hospital, the hospital would have drawn samples of blood.
That sample from Paul was ultimately tested and showed that he was intoxicated. And ultimately, Paul was charged with the boat crash
based on his toxicology levels. CREIGHTON WATERS: When you have something like this happen, Alex's wife and son, Maggie and Paul,
had been shot, the first thing you have to do is include or exclude people. We explored the boat case, obviously,
and whether or not anyone associated with that was involved. RYAN NEIL: Through our investigation and interviews,
through people's voluntary cooperating with us, and also through DNA samples that we had collected,
we were pretty quickly able to remove everybody from the boat case from this investigation.
CREIGHTON WATERS: When you do an investigation, you have to keep that open mind and consider everything.
There were literally hundreds of interviews that were done. And every possible lead was run down.
JOHN CONRAD: They did extremely thorough job investigating a crime scene. And I'm pretty sure they set a record
in any individual case of the number of people they interviewed. It had to have been over 100 people they interviewed
over that couple of months. And as they proceed in the investigation, they ruled this person out, this theory out, this person out,
this theory out. The entire time, Alex was still right in the middle of it and they could not rule him out of the case.
CREIGHTON WATERS: When you have a case where you have two family members who are killed and you have the person who's
the last one to have seen them alive, you have the person who is the one who found them, obviously,
that's somebody that you have to focus on to either include or exclude. JOHN CONRAD: Alex gave actually three interviews to SLED.
And SLED, they interviewed him the night of. MALE OFFICER: I hate to have to do this.
ALEX MURDAUGH: I understand. I totally understand. So you don't-- The initial interview is designed
to give us an overview of what transpired or what was going on at the time. They came back a couple of days later
and interviewed him a little further. The second interview is more to lock his story
in at that point because, well, let's face it, people are emotional. Are there some details he's left out or something else?
So that second interview is to set his story firm. And in this case, he was firm with it.
He stayed pretty consistent with what he told us initially to that second one. JOHN CONRAD: And then a couple months
go by as the investigation proceeds. And then they come back and interview him a third time in August.
But by that third interview, the agent had some very strong suspicions about Alex
and had some things that he wanted to clear up to see if Alex could explain. RYAN NEIL: So I would say in that his story now
is locked in on what he's done or what had happened. The investigation was proving different.
We're thinking, why are you being dishonest with us? What's your motive behind it?
So this third one is now going to dig in a little bit deeper, to look at those inaccuracies that are going on.
Paul's phone had been with us several months. And we had experts from our agency,
from the United States Secret Service, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation looking at his phone and possibly
how to get into this phone. Our people had been in contact with Cellebrite there,
the software and hardware provider that we were using, as they had the most advanced system at the time.
They got us into the phone. Now, that gave us all the data that we needed to look at.
Obviously, when we're looking at data, we're looking at call logs, text messaging, social media apps.
We're looking at instant messaging on those apps, everything that you can possibly think of.
JOHN CONRAD: When law enforcement arrived, Paul's phone-- he was laying more or less face down.
And Paul's phone was kind of laying on top of his back pocket on really kind of on his butt, which was pretty unusual
for a crime scene to see a phone sitting like that with someone-- really with their head blown off, laying face down.
Why would their phone be on their back pocket? It was pretty unusual. And of course, law enforcement noticed that.
And that was one of the questions they asked Alex in his first interview and said, do you
have any idea why Paul's phone would have ended up where it did? And Alex actually said in that first interview,
he admits to picking Paul's phone up. And he says, I was going to go look at it.
And then he said, oh, then I realized I probably shouldn't mess with it. And I put it back down on his body,
is what Alex says in that first interview. So that's one of the things they asked him
about in that third interview. Alex kind of says, well, I don't remember. In reality, he was probably potentially worried
about what was on Paul's phone. Law enforcement couldn't get into Paul's phone for many months after the murder.
They found a video. And that video. MAN: Get back. Get back. RYAN NEIL: Well, it's a short video.
And what it appears is that Paul is attempting to video record the injury to Rogan Gibson's dog's tail.
Because you see Rogan's little dog moving all around the kennels. And you hear Maggie yell out, oh, my god.
He's got a guinea, being a guinea bird. Paul says back, no, that's a chicken. JOHN CONRAD: The key piece of evidence in this case
is and has always been that dog video, where you hear Alex's voice in the background.
Because across the three interviews with SLED, he was steadfast and said, I never went to the kennels.
I never went to the kennels. I never went to the kennels. And when SLED finally discovered that video
that I can clearly hear Alex's voice in the background. All of a sudden, boom. That whole alibi is gone.
RYAN NEIL: Alex had always stood firm that he had fallen asleep at the house and then gone to visit his mother
and never went to the kennels. And by his phone records and all the records we obtained,
we knew that he had left his residence sometime after 9 o'clock to go to his mom and dad's house.
With the time stamp on this shows that his presence at the kennel was before he left
to go to his mom and dad's. CREIGHTON WATERS: Ultimately, as we put together the evidence
in the case, as we in particular put together a timeline based on all the cell phone evidence and all the digital evidence
that we were able to uncover, we were able to show that, not only was Alex at the scene,
he was at the scene with the two victims, just minutes before they died. And he had been lying about it.
For us, this video showed that he is now officially lying to us. And that he is being dishonest on purpose now.
[eerie music] JOHN CONRAD: After the murders, when Alex is done, he's gone back from the kennels to the house because I think he
had left his phone at the house the entire time, but we see it get picked up at 9:15 ish.
And he's got it. And he's trying to call Maggie. We see him walking around. OK, so that's the end of that hour and a half
where he had left the phone at the house. We know, for a fact, that he had to have the weapons with him
when he went back to the house because they later disappeared. And we still haven't found them.
And so he had to have them with him because he later on disposed of them in some way.
And I think when he came back from the kennel, he brought Maggie's phone with him.
RYAN NEIL: Because his vehicle was so new, we reached out to General Motors. They were able to produce us with vehicle
data off of his vehicle. JOHN CONRAD: It turned out to be an extremely detailed, almost
second by second location data of where that truck went, and how fast it was going throughout the night.
And on the surface, it seemed to support Alex's alibi. It shows, at about the time he said, he'd drive to mom's house
and then drive back. And one of the things we saw was, on his way back from mom's house to Moselle,
he was driving, at certain points, over 80 miles an hour. These are very rural two lane roads.
And it's extremely dark out there at night. No street lamps. That's very fast to be driving under those conditions,
for someone who's just having a normal night drive. And the number two thing is and really
the most important thing to me is, we can show precisely when Alex's car drove by where SLED found Maggie's phoned the next day.
He sends Maggie a text saying, hey, I'm going to mom's house or M's house or whatever he says.
That is within about a 10 second window of when he drives by right where her phone ends up.
He sends her that last text, setting up that alibi. And then he knows he can't drive with Maggie's phone
to mom's house. So then he just tosses it and we see his car drive by almost at the same time,
right after he sends that text. And so he sends a text, probably picks her phone up
to see if the text comes in, tosses it. I think that's a mistake he made. And he didn't realize we were going
to be able to see to that granular of a detail, but we do. And we also can see his speed.
And we can see that he does seem to slow down a little bit right as he passes Maggie, didn't stop, maybe
consistent with taking your foot off the gas, rolling down the window, and tossing it.
I think that's all pretty much marries up. And I think that's what the evidence shows is exactly what happened with Alex and Maggie's phone.
MAN: I'll meet you at the car, OK? A couple days later, we learned that he is actually shot on the side
of the road in Hampden County. I believe that date was September the 4th of '21.
He is shot once in the back of the head, but it's a grazing wound and does not penetrate his skull
or cause any massive injuries. It's more of a cut to his head. And what we initially were told is that he was riding down
the road in Maggie's Mercedes. And that the car had a flat tire. And while he was changing the tire,
a guy, a white male in a pickup truck drives by, turns around, and comes back towards him.
And as he goes to walk towards the guy because he thinks the guy is going to offer help,
the guy pulls out a gun, and shoots him once, and flees the scene. Alex is treated by EMS on the scene
and transported to Savannah Hospital, which is the closest trauma unit for a gunshot wound, especially one
possibly to the head. JOHN MONK: The rumors, the things we talked about where somebody trying to assassinate
Alex, you know, they are going to finish off the rest of his family. RYAN NEIL: We're talking about, now, two random acts of violence
on this family. But we're also thinking, could this be a person that's now come back to finish off the job,
that he was trying to kill Alex? [music playing] After the roadside shooting of Alex, some of his law partners
had grown suspicious of some things. And there was actually some confrontation between him
and some of his lawyer friends, that he had been stealing from the law firm and stealing from his friends, which
ultimately led to that roadside shooting. We went ahead and opened a case into his financials
because we felt like his financial stuff may be partially motive for Maggie and Paul's death as well.
After the roadside shooting, the law firm provided us basically with a spreadsheet that
showed these are the clients. And this is how much he stole from those clients, in various ways.
CREIGHTON WATERS: And that really became crucial in describing why these murders happened.
What we uncovered and what came to light in a couple of months after the murders was that Alex had
conspired with his buddy, another attorney by the name of Corey Fleming. He was a member of that law firm and was very close with a number
of lawyers in the area. Many have considered him a great friend and ultimately were very shocked when they found out that he had
betrayed them as their partner. JOHN CONRAD: And really, the reason he was doing that was to keep supporting his lifestyle,
and to keep supporting Maggie's lifestyle, and keep supporting the boy's lifestyle because when we traced
all those financial records, the vast majority of money that he made legitimately and he stole
went to fund the lifestyle. Alex took things into his own hands to make sure they could keep living that type of lifestyle.
RYAN NEIL: We were kind of in shock that financial issues were coming up because the lifestyle they led.
They live on this nice house. They have this huge piece of property, which the property itself was in the millions of dollars.
Flying private planes to college baseball world series, to eat an expensive dinners and stuff.
We were kind of in shock that financial problems were existing with him. JOHN MONK: On the outside, Alex looked
like a very prosperous lawyer, being part of multimillion dollar settlements. And his house at Moselle, the estate and his 1,700 acres,
and his house at the beach, Edisto Island, and another house on an island. He had all the trappings of wealth, but underneath,
he was drowning in debt, struggling to keep up payments for various mortgages and the high life
he liked. So you had these two, Alex Murdaugh. One outwardly showy and confident
and brash and prosperous. And the other, desperate and grubbing for money and becoming a man who would do anything to get more money.
RYAN NEIL: A couple days after the roadside shooting, Alex ends up telling us the full story.
And that is that he confirms to us that he wanted to die. And he asked Eddie to shoot him because he felt like if it was
a suicide, it was not going to pay the life insurance out for Buster. And that he felt like the stress had become too much.
And he was losing everything with the law firm and everything going on with Maggie and Paul.
And so therefore, he wanted to die, at that point. His lawyers, at this point, are now involved.
And this is Dick Harpootlian and Jim Griffith. They are now representing him officially because this case
is now taking a different turn. And we have already told them that we're going to charge him
the minute he comes out of rehab, which they have put him in for an opioid addiction.
They blame everything on an opioid addiction. And that when he was a football player-- because Alex
did play football for the University of South Carolina. He at one point got injured and became addicted to painkillers.
BLANCA SIMPSON: When he got arrested, it was devastating because being around them,
seeing the family unit, you know, how they flowed together. It was hard. And it still is.
It still bothers me. It's hard. After we released this story, which made headlines all around,
not only the state, but the country, people were just going, holy cow. I can't believe this.
What's going on? And even then, many people didn't believe that a husband and a father could kill his wife and son,
certainly not Alex Murdaugh from the nobility of the low country and the former president of the South Carolina
Trial Lawyers Association. No, he wouldn't have done that. And he was a Murdaugh.
And Murdaugh's don't murder their kin. The trial started January 23, 2023. And when it started, most people weren't sure that there
would be a guilty verdict. People thought-- by people, I mean court observers, reporters,
people who'd been around thought, well, the most probably the attorney general can hope for would be
a hung jury, a divided jury because it takes a unanimous jury of 12 people to find a guilty verdict.
And they thought a hung jury because of the prestige of the Murdaughs, because of the unlikelihood of a man
killing his wife and grown son, it just seemed a bridge too far for any prosecutor
to be able to pull off. CREIGHTON WATERS: I think that we presented evidence and argued
to the jury that neither one of them had defensive wounds, the traditional defensive wounds
that you would expect. And so that indicated to us that they were caught by surprise,
that they did not see the threat coming until it was too late. And obviously, that's consistent with someone
they wouldn't have expected to be their killer. There was a shotgun that killed Paul.
They had multiple blackout style AR rifles. They had bought three of them. One had been lost years ago.
And there had been a replacement bought. When SLED searched the property a couple of days later,
they only were able to account for the one blackout. And it was not the blackout that was used to kill Maggie.
The other blackout was missing. Alex's shotgun was missing as well. And so even though there were a lot of weapons that
were recovered at the property, the two weapons that were used to kill those victims were not there.
And they have never been recovered to this day. The body cam footage, those were the first two witnesses
that I presented at the trial. And that was very crucial. I put up the officers who were the first responders on scene.
And in doing that, there was a couple reasons. Number one, I knew I needed to get the jury familiar with Alex
Murdaugh's voice because that was going to be huge later when they saw and heard the kennel video, which showed that he was
actually at the scene right before the murders happened and lied about it. ALEX MURDAUGH: Are they covering them up?
CREIGHTON WATERS: He also did not appear to have any blood or anything on him when you look at the body cam from the scene.
And this was a very, very bloody scene. Both the victims had terrible injuries and it was as bloody a scene as I've ever seen.
We wanted the jury to get familiar with his voice, but we're also telling his version of events.
And so I wanted them to be thinking critically about how he was acting and what he was saying because that was all
going to become so important later when we presented evidence that refuted that.
What this case became about-- and this is what I argued to the jury. I said, ladies and gentlemen, this case
has a different type of forensic evidence. And I held up my cell phone. And I said, there's a new kind of forensic evidence
that's just as powerful. And it's just as objective as DNA. And it's what's in these cell phones.
Ultimately, when we were able to get into Paul's phone, he had taken a video at the kennels just a couple
of minutes prior to that. And that you could hear, very clearly, Alex's voice on that video.
Another real highlight was when Alex took the stand, he was Alex, the good old boy, aw shucks.
By that time, financial information had come out in the trial about Alex's extensive hidden life
of treachery and betrayal of his friends, and his law partners, and his family. Alex had a reputation of being very friendly with people,
very sociable, very well-liked. And psychologists say that Alex probably thought he could
convince the jury of anything. He was such a con man and had such confidence. JOHN CONRAD: We got a verdict within three hours.
And with my rationale and my thinking at the time, I was feeling pretty good at that point.
I felt like-- this jury, they went back there, where they talked about it. They deliberated.
But the fact that they were able to come to a unanimous decision within three hours, to me, was a pretty good sign
that they were going to come back guilty, which is what they did. The sentence was two consecutive life terms, which
means if the sentences sustain or withstand the appeals process, which every defendant has a right,
then he will never leave prison. And it's just simply never going to get out, which I think is just result.
MAN: I sentence you to prison for the rest of your natural life. JOHN MONK: Some people might have wanted Alex to face
the death penalty, but a life sentence was the most that the judge could give him.
And I think most people would consider that justice. BLANCA SIMPSON: I didn't want to hear the verdict.
My husband told me, you know, they have found him guilty. It hurt me. I don't know how else to describe it.
Because you don't know, was I really your friend? After Maggie and Paul were killed, I was around him,
you know, still taking care of him. It was like a betrayal. JOHN CONRAD: Alex is a very narcissistic person.
And you know, like a lot of criminals, the first lines he crossed were probably not a big deal.
The first time he stole money was probably not a lot of money. And probably nobody would have ever noticed.
But he probably realized nobody noticed. And then he stole more the next time. He stole more.
And he got more and more brazen. And at some point in there, he lost whatever grounding on morality he had.
And it became about himself. And it became about sustaining what he had been doing
and not getting caught, which is why, I think, the murders occurred. What we argued to the jury is that Alex's perception
of what people thought of him as being this powerful, influential, wealthy, charismatic heir
to this family legacy, the Murdaugh family name, the Murdaugh legal family name, which was so important to him.
And we argued to the jury that nothing mattered more to Alex than Alex. So the prospect of him facing accountability-- and this
was a man who had not had to face accountability his entire life. Those were very powerful motivators and stress words
to him, and they were more important to him than anything to ensure that nothing undid his power.
JOHN MONK: Alex had a motive for killing his wife and son. I think everybody in the courtroom,
even though Alex had been charged with these crimes, was just amazed at the extent of his treachery,
and his double life that he was leading, and the money that he had stolen from motherless children.
In all, Alex is said to have stolen about 10 million, maybe as high as 16 million over the course of 15 years.
BLANCA SIMPSON: Despite what I've heard people say, I believe that it was money.
I think he got desperate. I think he got desperate. CREIGHTON WATERS: You have to put yourself
in the position of someone like Alex, who was facing the prospect of his family's legacy of domination
in that area for over 100 years falling apart, was facing the prospect of his public persona
of this powerful, charismatic, wealthy, influential person falling apart and being exposed as a criminal.
This was a man that hundreds and hundreds of people would tell you that they thought that they knew him well.
And not one person knew who he really was. And there's something chilling about that.
The sentencing hearing was actually fairly impactful for me and the judge in this case, who did
an amazing job, Clifton Newman. He gets a philosophical in a way that touches me because he talked to Alex
and got at the heart of the matter. When he says, Alex, I'll bet you hear from Maggie and Paul
every night, don't you, when you go to bed? And Alex agreed with that. I think Maggie and Paul are going to haunt
Alex for the rest of his life. BLANCA SIMPSON: All I can say is Maggie and Paul did not deserve
the brutality of their murders. They did not. The last few memories I have of Paul and Maggie are good ones.
We were laughing. We were joking. You know, I can still see Paul walking through the door, what
up, Ms. B? You know, that's what he called me. All the love that I saw and all the family, you know,
the united family unit that I saw on a regular basis was not displayed the day of the murders
by the man who claimed to love them. [theme music]

In 2023, Alex Murdaugh, a prominent South Carolina lawyer, was charged with murdering his wife and son. The killings were linked to his financial crimes, including embezzlement and fraud.

Greed, jealousy, revenge, lust, anger — any and all are motives for murder. When there's cash involved, the stakes are even higher. Explore a new case in each episode of Millionaire Murders.

Brief Summary

The episode details the Murdaugh family murders, Alex Murdaugh's investigation, and his eventual conviction for the crimes.

Key points

911 Call Reveals Tragedy. Alex Murdaugh's frantic call to 911 reveals the shocking news of his family's shooting.
The Murdaugh Family Legacy. The Murdaughs were a powerful dynasty in South Carolina, deeply intertwined with the legal system.
The Boat Crash Incident. Paul Murdaugh's involvement in a fatal boating accident raises questions about motives for the murders.
The Dog Video Evidence. A video recorded by Paul Murdaugh becomes a key piece of evidence in the investigation.
Alex's Alibi Crumbles. Evidence reveals Alex Murdaugh's presence at the crime scene just before the murders.
The Roadside Shooting. Alex Murdaugh is shot on the side of the road, raising suspicions about his family's safety.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I need help because my wife and son have been shot.

Alex Murdaugh's 911 call

1:32WatchMar 28, 2025

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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