The 54-year-old man faces life in prison. He is said to have shot two family members to cover up a burglary. He then allegedly paid a man to shoot him so that his son could collect his life insurance.
Well-known attorney Alex Murdaugh was found guilty of double homicide in a case that attracted great interest in the United States. A jury found Thursday in Walterboro, South Carolina, that the 54-year-old man shot his wife and child. The lawyer faces a life sentence.
The jury took less than three hours to reach its decision. With their guilty verdict, they followed the prosecution’s allegations. The attorney, who belongs to a prominent legal family, shot and killed his wife Maggie, 52, and son Paul, 22, on June 7, 2021 at the family’s South Carolina hunting property.
“The evidence is overwhelming,” said Judge Clifton Newman. He announced that he would like to enforce the sentence on Friday. For each of the two murders, Murdaugh faces a minimum of 30 years in prison, but could also be sentenced to life in prison for both crimes. “Today’s verdict proves that no one – and absolutely no one – is above the law,” said prosecutor Alan Wilson.
Murdaugh stole millions of dollars from law firm
The defendant himself showed little reaction to the guilty verdict. He was led out of the courtroom in handcuffs following the jury’s verdict. The lawyer had alerted the police in 2021 and said he had found the bodies. Later, however, he himself came under suspicion – and was finally charged with double murder in July 2022. The trial generated huge interest across the United States, with television stations broadcasting from the courtroom almost daily.
Murdaugh denied the crimes. However, he had to admit in court that he lied about his presence at the crime scene. His voice can be heard on a cellphone video his son Paul recorded shortly before the fatal shooting. Murdaugh had already stolen millions of dollars from his law firm, clients and even the family of a former employee who had collected the insurance money after the woman’s death in a fall. Among other things, he needed money to finance his addiction to opioids.
According to the prosecution, Murdaugh feared in the summer of 2021 that he would soon be exposed – and wanted to prevent this by killing his wife and child and buying time. So a few months after the double murder, he paid a man to kill him and his other son got a $10 million life insurance policy. Murdaugh was only wounded by the gunshot and survived. He admitted to investigators that he paid the criminal.
Netflix turned serial murders
The trial against the lawyer, which began in January, has attracted huge media interest in the US, with news channels broadcasting from the courtroom nearly every day. The streaming service Netflix recently released a widely watched series titled “The Murdaugh Murders: Scandal in the Southern States”. It also deals with another case: the murdered son Paul had been involved in a boating accident two years earlier, in which a 19-year-old young man died. Paul Murdaugh was accused of driving the boat while intoxicated.
(APA/AFP)