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The rise and fall of Alex Murdaugh, a disgraced South Carolina legal scion, continues to captivate the country years after his double murder conviction, in a case that exposed decades of deceit, greed and power.
The story of the Murdaugh family’s downfall is told in Hulu’s new limited series, “Murdaugh: Death in the Family,” an eight-part dramatization of one of the most infamous true-crime stories in recent history.
On June 7, 2021, Murdaugh called 911 to report that he had found his wife, Maggie, and youngest son, Paul, shot to death in an apparent homicide on the family’s sprawling Lowcountry estate.
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Alex Murdaugh is taken to the Colleton County Courthouse in Walterboro, South Carolina, Monday, January 30, 2023. Murdaugh is on trial for the double murder of Murdaugh’s son, Paul, and his wife, Maggie, in June 2021. (Mark Sims for Fox News Digital)
The phone call set off a shocking chain of events that ultimately exposed Murdaugh’s long history of lies and deception, culminating in the murder of his wife and son.
“I think it’s often difficult for people to compartmentalize what we think and who we think we know,” Mark Tinsley, an attorney who testified in the criminal case against Murdaugh, told Fox News Digital. “I think there’s probably a group of people who still have a hard time believing that the facade they saw wasn’t real.”
Murdaugh comes from one of South Carolina’s most prolific legal families, making him a powerful figure in local politics leveraged by his name recognition.
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Alex Murdaugh, right, is pictured here with his family. (The Murdaugh Family)
However, his family was not without controversy.
In 2018, Gloria Satterfield, the family’s longtime housekeeper, mysteriously died at the Murdaugh home.
Three years later, Paul, then 19 years old, boarded his family’s boat with a group of friends for a drunken evening on the water. Hours later, the ship slammed into a nearby bridge, ejecting 19-year-old Mallory Beach into the dark waters.
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Alex Murdaugh’s photo. (South Carolina Department of Corrections)
Beach’s body was found days later, and the family eventually filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the Murdaughs. Following intense public pressure, Paul was charged by the state in connection with Beach’s death.
Two years later, on the night of Maggie and Paul’s murders, investigators responded to Murdaugh’s 911 call from the family’s home in Colleton County. The bodies of the mother and son were found near the kennel in the backyard of the estate, and they were pronounced dead at the scene.
While Murdaugh initially told authorities he was not present at the kennel that night, a Snapchat video recorded by Paul confirmed his father was at the crime scene around the time investigators believed the two men were killed.
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Disbarred attorney Alex Murdaugh arrives at court in Beaufort, South Carolina, Thursday, September 14, 2023. (AP Photo/James Pollard)
In September 2021, Murdaugh attempted to stage his own shooting in an attempt to give Buster, his surviving son, a $10 million life insurance policy. The plot failed when Curtis Edward Smith grazed Murdaugh’s head with a bullet.
However, it was Satterfield’s death that ultimately led investigators to uncover Murdaugh’s web of lies, after it was learned that he had stolen $4.3 million in insurance settlement funds intended to be given to his grieving family.
“I knew he had done some things that weren’t necessarily honest in the way he [the Satterfield case] was handled,” Tinsley said. “But it turned out to be a lot worse than I thought. At the time of the roadside shooting, I knew the full extent of what had happened, and there was a lot of it.”
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A month later, Murdaugh was arrested for defrauding the Satterfield family while he was in a drug treatment center in Orlando, Florida. according to The Associated Press. Shortly afterward, prosecutors announced 27 new charges against Murdaugh, alleging he stole nearly $5 million from multiple victims.
In the months before Murdaugh was indicted for the murders of his wife and son, prosecutors piled up dozens of charges alleging the disgraced lawyer stole millions of dollars from his clients and victims’ families to support his addiction to painkillers.
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He was charged with the deaths of Maggie and Paul on July 14, 2022, sparking a months-long trial that ended in a guilty verdict.
Murdaugh was sentenced in 2023 to two consecutive life sentences for the murders of his wife and son. He is also serving an additional 40 years in prison for his financial crimes and remains incarcerated in a maximum security prison in South Carolina, marking the end of a legal dynasty that ruled the Lowcountry for decades.
Murdaugh’s attorney, the prosecution and Hulu did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
“I think overall most people understand,” Tinsley told Fox News Digital. “Most people understand, and most people see through his web of lies and deception.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
