Topline
Alex Murdaugh was sentenced Friday to life in prison for the murder of his wife and 22-year-old son, a day after a jury quickly found the former South Carolina attorney guilty in a case that garnered national attention.
Key Facts
South Carolina Circuit Judge Clifton Newman sentenced the former attorney to consecutive life sentences for the murder of his wife Maggie and son Paul.
Newman said during the sentencing that Murdaugh’s decision to lie about his whereabouts at the time of the murders swayed jurors away from his testimony, which implied he “didn’t shoot my wife or my son, anytime, ever.”
Newman suggested “it might have been the monster you become when you” consume opioids—after Murdaugh admitted to taking up to 60 pills in a day—adding “the person standing before me was not the person who committed the crime, though it is the same individual.”
Murdaugh was found guilty of two counts of murder and two counts of possession of a weapon used to commit a violent crime Thursday after a jury deliberated for less than three hours.
What To Watch For
The 52-year-old former attorney also faces at least 99 other charges for alleged financial crimes across multiple cases that are yet to go to trial. Murdaugh has been accused of swindling nearly $9 million from his clients. The former attorney was also charged with tax evasion for failing to pay taxes on his illegal income.
Key Background
Prosecutors successfully argued Murdaugh killed his wife, 52-year-old Maggie, and 22-year-old son, Paul, on his 1,700-acre rural estate in South Carolina in June 2021. Their bodies were found in the estate’s dog kennels. Murdaugh is also accused of hiring a former client to kill him in a bid to ensure that his older son Buster would receive a $10 million life insurance payout. Murdaugh pleaded not guilty in the murder case, maintaining he found the dead bodies of his wife and son after he returned home on the night of their deaths following a visit to his mother. But he later changed his stance, admitting he was at the kennels on the day of the murder but went there before the two were killed. A video taken from Murdaugh’s phone, in which the voices of his wife and son could be heard in the background, helped place the former attorney at the scene of the crime just minutes before the murder. This video was reportedly the key piece of evidence that convinced the jury of Murdaugh’s guilt.
Tangent
The high-profile case garnered national attention after it became the subject of two major true-crime documentary series. HBO Max’s Low Country: The Murdaugh Dynasty was released in 2022 and Netflix’s Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal came out earlier this year.
Further Reading
Alex Murdaugh Found Guilty Of Murdering Wife And Son (Forbes)
Alex Murdaugh Trial Heads To Jury Deliberations After Closing Arguments (Forbes)