On Labor Day weekend, the convoluted story of the Murdaugh Family Murders took another confounding twist when prominent South Carolina attorney Alex Murdaughwas shot in the headin Hampton County, South Carolina.
At first, it seemed like someone had tried to kill Murdaugh in the same way that that his wife Margaret “Maggie” Murdaugh and son Paul Murdaugh weremurderedthree months earlier when they were gunned down on the grounds of the family’s 1,770-acre hunting lodge.
But soon, more details of the shooting were released – and it appeared that Murdaugh had orchestrated his own shooting in an attempt to get a $10 million insurance settlement for his surviving son, Buster.
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Alex Murdaugh.Mic Smith/AP/Shutterstock
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Though Alex survived the gunshot, he soon announced a two-decade addiction to opioids and entered rehab at an undisclosed location out of state. At the same time, his law firm announced that he had been fired for allegedly misappropriating millions of dollars from their accounts.
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By the time Murdaugh was back in South Carolina on Sept. 16—shackled at the wrists and ankles and sobbing in court—the 53-year-old, nicknamed Big Red as much for his 6'4" frame as for his domineering influence over the region’s judicial system, was a shell of his former self.
Alex Murdaugh, PEOPLE cover.Facebook
Now, Murdaugh is out of a job, allegedly broke, charged with conspiracy and fraud for a botched suicide attempt and facing new investigations—one into the money missing from his family law firm and another related to the mysterious 2018 death of his longtime housekeeper.
That craziness includes new scrutiny into other deaths surrounding the Murdaugh family.
There are still questions about a 2019 boat crash that killed one of Paul Murdaugh’s passengers, Mallory Beach. Investigators concluded that the teens were “grossly intoxicated.” He pleaded not guilty to three felony counts of boating under the influence and was awaiting trial at the time of his death.
The Murdaugh story, which is on the cover of this week’s PEOPLE, continues to fascinate people across the country – but in the small town of Islandton, South Carolina, people are starting to realize that the Murdaugh’s storied life was all a facade.
As one member of the Murdaugh’s social circle tells PEOPLE in its latest issue: “Behind all those black ties and fancy dresses were some pretty miserable people.”
source: people.com
