The Murdaugh Family Murders

Transcript generated from the episode script.

0:05 What's up guys welcome back to Crime Time Snacks. On June 7, 2021, 52 year old Maggie Murdoff texted a friend. She said her husband sounded fishy and was up to something. A few hours later she was dead. To understand how this happened you have to look at the Murdoff family. They were a massive legal dynasty in the South Carolina Low Country. Alex's grandfather and father ran the local prosecutor's office for decades. Alex Murdoff followed right in their footsteps. He graduated from the University of South Carolina's

0:32 School of Law in 1994. He worked as an attorney at the family's prominent private law firm and volunteered at the prosecutor's office. Alex was married to Maggie who was known locally as a socialite. They shared a massive 1,070 acre estate in a small community called Eilinton. They had two sons, Buster and 22 year old Paul. In the summer of 2021 the family was already making headlines. Paul was under criminal indictment for the wrongful death of a 19 year old named Mallory Beach. She was a passenger on a boat Paul allegedly drove into a bridge while drunk

1:04 back in 2019. Paul had pleaded not guilty and was out awaiting trial. He was a student at the University of South Carolina working a summer job at his uncle's tractor dealership. The family was under immense public and legal pressure. Then came the night of June 7. Alex called Maggie and asked her to meet him at the family's hunting lodge. He reportedly wanted them to travel together to visit his father who was terminally ill. Maggie agreed but she was suspicious. That is when she

1:30 sent the text about Alex sounding fishy. She drove to the estate parked her car and walked down to the dog kennels. That is where she found Paul. At 10,006 p.m. Alex called 911 from his cell phone. He told dispatchers he had just discovered the bodies of his wife and son on the ground and that they were not breathing. The case file shows both victims were shot multiple times at close range. They were hit in the head, wrists and chest. Investigators quickly noted that two different guns were used in the killings. We have to look closer at that 2019

1:59 boat crash. It happened on February 24, 2019 at a bridge near Parris Island in Beaufort County. The boat actually belonged to Alex Murdoch. There were six people on board that night. The crash killed Mowry Beach and injured two other passengers. In April 2019, Paul was officially charged with three felonies including boating under the influence causing death. The case file shows Paul had a blood alcohol content of 28.6. That is more than three times the legal limit for an adult driver. To get the alcohol, Paul used an ID belonging to his older

2:30 brother Buster. What happened immediately after the crash caused massive local outrage. Despite allegedly driving the boat, Paul was never handcuffed. He was not given a field sobriety test and police did not take him to jail for booking. People immediately speculated the family was getting special treatment because of their deep ties to the local justice system. A judge even denied a request from prosecutors to make Paul wear an alcohol monitor while awaiting trial. The fallout quickly moved into civil court. The Beach family's lawsuit implicated

2:58 both Alex and Buster for providing the alcohol to an underage Paul. The family of another teen on the boat, Connor Cook, also filed a lawsuit. Cook's family claimed Alex tried to orchestrate a coverup. They alleged Alex pushed them to hire a specific attorney named Corey Fleming just to protect Paul. By September 2021, state investigators were looking into whether local police were pressured not to charge Paul initially. That civil lawsuit was a ticking clock for Alex. The Beach case began exposing information that led to an inquiry into

3:26 his finances. Had the boat crash trial gone forward, prosecutors later argued Alex's financial misdeeds would have been completely uncovered. In the days before Maggie and Paul were killed, a judge scheduled a hearing to consider a motion compelling Alex to turn over his financial records. Maggie had also arranged for a forensic accountant to review the family finances. The walls were closing in. The case file shows June 7, 2021, did not start as a normal Monday for Alex Murdoch. That morning, the chief financial officer at his namesake law firm

3:56 confronted him. They demanded answers about $792,000 in missing funds. That confrontation came just hours before Alex called Maggie to the hunting estate, which the family called Mozel. The property sat right on the Salcahatchee River. The stated plan was to travel together to see Alex's father, Randolph Murdoch III. Randolph had also served as the local prosecutor. Now, he was 81 years old and terminally ill. But the record shows Maggie had her own reasons to be wary of a sudden

4:24 meetup. She was reportedly considering ending her marriage to Alex. In fact, she had consulted a divorce lawyer in Charleston just several weeks before this phone call. What we do not know is exactly what she expected to happen when she got there. She walked into a situation that investigators would spend years trying to fully unpack. Alex's initial story to police was very specific about his own movements that evening. He told officers he took a nap after dinner while Maggie and Paul went down to the kennels. He claimed he woke up, left the property to visit

4:52 his ailing mother in Almeda, and only found the bodies when he returned after 10 p.m. His mother, Libby, suffered from dementia, and she had a caregiver named Mooshal Smith working that night. Smith later told investigators that Alex's visit lasted about 20 minutes. She also noted that Alex later insisted to her that he had actually been there closer to 40 minutes. That conversation made Smith uneasy enough to contact her brother, who worked in law enforcement. It was one of several details that investigators flagged early on. The timeline Alex gave simply

5:20 did not line up with the witness accounts they were gathering. There was also the matter of what Alex was wearing. Blanca Terubiedi Simpson, the family's housekeeper, remembered fixing the collar about his blue polo shirt that morning. That same shirt is visible in a video Paul took hours before the murders, but investigators have never been able to find it. That night, Maggie already knew something was off. We know she texted her friend about Alex acting fishy. What she did not know was that her son Paul was about to capture the most

5:47 critical piece of evidence in the entire case. Down at the dog kennels, Paul recorded a video on his phone. The time stamp on that video is 8,044 p.m. When investigators pulled the data, they heard something that changed everything. In the background of Paul's video, you can clearly hear Alex's voice. This completely shattered the timeline Alex gave police. Cell phone data placed him right there at the scene just minutes before prosecutors say the murders happened. He was not taking a nap inside the house. Alex eventually had to admit he lied.

6:18 When he took the witness stand at his trial, he was confronted with that 8,044 p.m. video. He confessed he was actually at the kennels that night. He blamed his deception on paranoia caused by an opioid addiction. On the stand, he actually said, oh what a tangled web we weave. But the strange behavior did not stop on the night of the killings. The morning after Maggie and Paul were shot, Alex made a specific request. He asked Blanca to come over. He told her to clean the house the way Maggie liked. The case file shows the investigation quickly expanded past the

6:46 events of June 7. By August 11, a state investigator sharply questioned Alex and intimated he was a suspect. The pressure was mounting and Alex's life was about to unravel even further. On September 3, 2021, Alex resigned from his law firm. The firm stated he misappropriated funds. The very next day, Alex called 911 to report he had been shot in the head on a rural road in Hampton County. He was taken to a hospital in Savannah, Georgia with a superficial wound. A family spokesperson issued a statement saying a man in a blue pickup truck shot

7:16 Alex while he was checking a low tire. But the truth was much darker. Court documents later revealed Alex inspired with a former client and distant cousin, Curtis Edward Smith, to kill him. The plan was to secure a $10 million life insurance payout for his surviving son, Buster. The roadside shooting was completely staged. While this was happening, investigators started looking backward. On June 22, the State Law Enforcement Division reopened the 2015 unsolved death of 19-year-old

7:43 Stephen Smith. His body had been found on a road in Hampton County. The agency stated they reopened Smith's case based on information gathered while investigating the deaths of Maggie and Paul. They were also looking at the 2018 death of Gloria Satterfield. She was a long-time housekeeper who died in a reported trip and fall accident at the Murdoch home. After Satterfield's death, a $500,000 wrongful death claim was filed against Alex. The deeper investigators dug, the more bodies and missing money they found tied to the Murdoch name.

8:12 Maggie and Paul were found near the dog kennels. The case file shows what investigators found when they arrived. Maggie and Paul were both shot multiple times in the head, wrists, and chest. The scene made it clear that two different guns were used in the attack. When a Calton County grand jury eventually indicted Alex for the killings, the paperwork detailed those weapons. The indictment stated that Alex shot his wife with a rifle. It said he used a shotgun to kill his son. On the initial 911 call, Alex actually referred to the scene as a cold-blooded

8:40 murder. The South Carolina law enforcement division, known as SLED, released redacted audio of that call in July. You can hear Alex sounding distraught, telling dispatchers his family members were on the ground and not breathing. SLED investigators spent that night and the next morning collecting evidence around the kennels. Publicly, the Murdoch family presented a united front. On June 17, Alex's brothers, John Marvin and Randy, appeared on national television. They went on Good Morning America and told the public that Alex was completely devastated.

9:10 They explicitly stated they did not believe their brother was involved in the killings. A week later, Alex and his surviving son, Buster, announced a $100,000 reward for information leading to a conviction. But the public narrative did not match what was happening behind closed doors. It was later revealed that SLED considered Alex a person of interest from the very start of the investigation. When prosecutors finally laid out their case, they offered a very specific motive. They suggested Alex was desperate for a

9:37 distraction from his financial crimes, which were just beginning to go public. They argued he committed the murders to garner sympathy and stall the inevitable. Alex pleaded not guilty to the murder charges and was denied bond. Prosecutors announced they would seek life imprisonment without the possibility of parole rather than the death penalty. The evidence collected at the kennels that night would soon become the center of a massive trial. When you look at the official record of

10:01 that 911 call, there's a slight discrepancy in the timeline. Early reports and some case files note that Alex styled police from his cell phone at exactly 10,006 p.m., but SLED logged the call at 10,007 p.m. It is just a one-minute difference, but in a case where the timeline is everything, those 60 seconds matter. First responders had to make their way out to the family's massive hunting estate. The property sits in Eilinton. That is a small community located about an hour north of Hilton Head Island. That is where the investigation began.

10:33 That property is no longer in the family. The estate was later rebranded as Cross Swamp Farm. It was listed for sale and sold for $3.9 million by people who wanted the land for farming and hunting. They had no interest in the main house. The new owners partitioned the buildings in about 21 surrounding acres into a separate property. In 2024, they resold that parcel for $1 million, which was well below market value. The buyer was a local home restoration professional who quickly made major changes to the layout of the house. While investigators were processing that

11:04 estate back in June 2021, the family suffered another loss. Just three days later, Alex's father passed away. Randolph Murdov III died peacefully at his home on June 10. The Murdov name had dominated the local justice system for generations. Randolph III had taken over the prosecutor role from his own father, Randolph Jr., who retired in 1986. When Randolph III stepped down, the governor appointed an attorney named Duffy Stone to serve as the 14th Circuit Solicitor in 2006 that made Stone the first person without the last name Murdov to hold the position in decades.

11:36 The Solicitor website notes he has been elected five times since, most recently in 2024. The investigation into the murders eventually blew the lid off Alex's financial history. By 2023, the record shows Alex faced a staggering 102 grand jury criminal charges. He was hit with 19 indictments relating to fraud and drug offenses. 99 of those charges came from the state grand jury, while three came from Hampton County. As a result of the theft and fraud convictions, Alex was disbarred, his assets were seized, and he is currently serving a 40-year prison sentence.

12:08 The murder case itself became a massive media event. News outlets called it South Carolina's trial of the century. After a five-week trial, the jury deliberated for just three hours. On March 2, 2023, they found Alex guilty of both murders. He was handed two consecutive life sentences. But that is not where the story ends. On May 13, 2026, the South Carolina Supreme Court made a massive ruling that unanimously voted to vacate Alex's murder convictions and his life sentence. The court ruled that the

12:36 jury had been tampered with by a court clerk named Becky Hill. Because her actions tainted the trial, the justices ordered a completely new trial for the murders of Maggie and Paul. Prosecutors have already stated they plan to retry the case. Alex initially claimed that at the time of the killings he had been with his mother, who has dementia. However, cell phone data, including video containing Alex's voice, placed him at the scene before the murders. In July 2022, a Colleton County grand jury indicted Alex on two counts of murder

13:05 and two counts of possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime. He pleaded not guilty. On the witness stand, he later admitted repeatedly lying to law officers about whether he had been at the kennels. Murdoch appealed the conviction. The defense alleged jury tampering by Colleton County Clerk of Court Rebecca Hill. They alleged that Hill advised the jury not to believe Alex's testimony on the stand. The defense also claimed she pressured them to reach a quick guilty verdict and misrepresented information presented during the trial.

13:33 Hill even went on to write a book about her time working on the case. The state Supreme Court ruled 5-0 in favor of Alex's appeal. They stated that the jury's efforts were in vain because Hill placed her fingers on the scales of justice. South Carolina Attorney General Allen Wilson quickly released a statement following the ruling. He said his office respectfully disagreed with the decision but would aggressively seek to retry Alex as soon as possible. Wilson also made it clear that this decision did not mean Alex was

13:57 going free, noting he would remain in prison for his financial crimes. Those financial crimes had unraveled at lightning speed back in September 2021. On September 6, Alex released a statement through his attorney, Dick Harputlian, to a local news station saying he was resigning an entering rehab. The very next day, his former law firm, PMPED, confirmed he resigned after they discovered he misappropriated funds. A few days later, on September 13, the state law enforcement division

14:24 announced they had opened a formal investigation into the missing money. The financial walls were closing in on Alex by September, but the physical evidence from the night of the murders was already a massive problem. When law enforcement arrived at the estate on June 7, they had to secure a sprawling outdoor area. The case file shows that process was flawed almost from the very beginning. The weather immediately worked against the investigators down by the dog kennels. It was

14:48 a misty June night and rain began falling on the property while police were trying to process the area. First responders made a critical choice to cover Maggie and Paul's bodies with standard sheets instead of waterproof tarps. That decision allowed the rain to soak right through, spoiling a completely exposed outdoor crime scene. The issues went beyond just the weather and the tarps. During the murder trial, Alex's defense attorney, Dick Harputlian, heavily criticized how the state handled the physical space around the victims.

15:15 The record shows police reportedly failed to collect various pieces of physical evidence before the scene was officially cleared. Once crucial evidence is left behind in the mud and rain, investigators can never get it back. The scene was also heavily compromised by unnecessary foot traffic. First responders, family members, and friends were all seen walking right through the taped off restricted areas. You have an unsolved double homicide on a massive rural property and unauthorized people are just pacing through the exact spots where a

15:41 shooter might have stood. It is a complete nightmare for forensic integrity. The timeline of how quickly law enforcement handed the property back is also a major sticking point in the record. The crime scene at the kennels was released back to the Murdoff family a mere 12 hours after the murders took place. Alex's brother John Marvin actually went down to the kennels shortly after the police tape came down. He quickly began cleaning up Paul's blood and brain matter later stating he just felt compelled to do it.

16:07 While the physical crime scene was deteriorating, investigators were pulling digital evidence. When you look at the record, Alex's phone activity showed a sudden burst of movement at 9,002 pm that night. They also pulled the GPS data from his car. It recorded him driving 80 miles per hour to and from his parents home. During that drive, he passed the exact spot where Maggie's phone was later found discarded on the side of the road. As the investigation dragged on into the fall, the financial side

16:32 of the case blew wide open. In September 2021, Alex gave broad powers of attorney to his surviving son, Buster. This gave Buster the authority to sell and dispose of his father's assets. They quickly placed the family's Edisto Beach House on the market for $9,000.00. But the court stepped in before the money could disappear. On November 1, 2021, a judge ordered all of the Murdoff assets to be frozen. Evidence suggested the family was trying to move and hide money from potential creditors and multiple plaintiffs.

17:02 Alex and Buster actually tried to overturn the order. They claimed they had no money left to pay for food, medical insurance, or utilities. The assets were ultimately placed into a receivership to protect them. The professional consequences for Alex also became permanent. On July 12, 2022, the court officially disbarred him. The court cited his admitted reprehensible misconduct. Alex was given the opportunity to contest the disbarment, but he did not. As we discussed, the crime scene was spoiled by rain. Police reportedly

17:30 failed to collect various evidence, and family members and friends were allowed to walk through the scene. SLED investigators kept their cards close to the chest. They were quietly working through the cell phone data and the ballistic evidence left in the rain. They built their case through the summer and into the fall. Then came October, 2021, when it was revealed that SLED had regarded Alex as a person of interest in the homicide since the start of the investigation. This was not a new development for the investigators. The man who made that

17:58 frantic 911 call had been in their crosshairs since night one. But now it was public. This shift in the investigation turned a local tragedy into a national obsession. The case became arguably one of the most high-profile and sensational cases in South Carolina legal history. Media outlets and independent creators rushed to cover every single development. In 2021, reporters Liz Farrell and Mandy Matney launched the Murdoch Murders podcast. Television networks quickly followed suit. HBO Max released a

18:27 documentary called Low Country. Investigation Discovery put out Deadly Dynasty and Netflix dropped a Southern scandal. There was also a dramatized movie on Lifetime. The public could not look away from the downfall of this Low Country legal dynasty. People wanted to know everything about the man at the center of it all. Richard Owens and Murdoch was born on May 27, 1968. He earned his undergraduate degree from the University of South Carolina in 1990. He built his career at the firm officially known as Peters, Murdoch, Parker,

18:56 Eltsroth and Dietrich. The public also learned more about the victims and the surviving son. Maggie was born Margaret Kennedy Brandstetter on September 15, 1968. The surviving son, Buster, was born on April 11, 1996. While the murder case grabbed the headlines, the financial cases were quietly moving forward. Owens officially pleaded guilty to a series of financial crimes, but the overlap between the stolen money and the murders created a massive legal issue. When the state Supreme Court eventually overturned the murder convictions in 2026,

19:27 they cited more than just jury tampering. The justices stated that the trial court allowed the state to go far too deep into Alex's financial crimes. They ruled that those financial details were not probative of the state's theory of motive. Instead, the court stated that including all that financial evidence created a considerable danger of unfair prejudice against Alex. We already know Alex's alibi fell apart because of that video at the Kennels, but getting that digital proof into a courtroom was a massive hurdle for the state.

19:54 Investigators had to dig deep into the cell phone data from both victims to map out their final moments. Paul was actually communicating with people right up until the end. When the trial began, prosecutors brought in two of his close friends to take the stand. They testified about their interactions with the family and their specific communications with Paul moments before his death. The prosecution also asked the judge to compel a representative of Snapchat to testify about a video posted by Paul minutes before his death. But the recording at the center

20:22 of the case was the one from the Kennels at 8044 p.m. with Alex's voice in the background. The prosecution also presented another crucial piece of audio during the trial. They brought in witnesses to testify about an interview conducted with Alex in a car on June 21, 2021. The state emphasized a specific moment in that recording for the jury. In the audio, Alex is heard talking about his son. The prosecution argued that Alex said, it is just so bad, I did him so bad. The defense team immediately fought back,

20:50 disputing the audio and claiming the recording actually said they instead of I. The digital witness went beyond just audio and video clips. The state built a massive technological timeline to prove their case. They brought in an expert witness to testify specifically about the data collected from Maggie's phone. To tie it all together, prosecutors called a sled agent to testify about a timeline for the events of June 7, aggregating all of the data collected from various sources. They did not just rely on the victims' devices. The agent

21:20 combined the cell phone data from Maggie, Paul and Alex with local cell phone tower pings. They even layered in the car telemetry data to track Alex's exact movements that night. The murder trial officially opened on January 25, 2023. Proceedings took place in the 14th Circuit of the South Carolina Circuit Court. After years of public speculation and financial scandals, Alex Murdoch was finally sitting in front of a jury. The state built their case over several weeks, resting on February 17. Their first witnesses were the responders who arrived

21:50 right after Alex made that 911 call. Prosecutors also brought in state agents to lay out the firearms and ballistics evidence. They called former colleagues and clients to testify about Alex's financial situation right before the murders. A local bank executive even took the stand to detail their discovery of his theft. But the defense strategy was clear from the start. Attorney Dick Harputlian led the charge by relentlessly attacking the state's investigation. He pointed right at the decisions made by first responders. The defense heavily criticized

22:20 what they saw as total police incompetence. They brought in their own expert witnesses to hammer this idea home for the jury. One was a crime scene engineer who recreated the physical space around the kennels. That engineer argued that the calculated height of the shooter did not match Alex's actual height. Harputlian's team also called the Colleton County Coroner to the stand to question the state's timeline. The coroner testified that he had only estimated the victim's body temperatures, making the official time of death just an estimate.

22:48 The defense also brought in a bloodstain spatter expert named Tim Palmback. The record shows Palmback has testified in other high-profile trials, including the Michael Peterson case. He testified that whoever fired those weapons at such close range would have been completely covered in blood in gunshot residue. Palmback told the jury that the physical evidence was actually consistent with two shooters being present. They even had a pathologist dispute the state's findings on the entrance and exit

23:12 wounds on Paul's body. The defense wanted the jury to believe law enforcement botched the scene and rushed to judgment. On February 21, the defense called Buster to the stand. Their final witness was John Marvin. But the biggest moment of the trial came on February 23. Alex Murdoch took the stand in his own defense. He flatly denied shooting his wife and son. He did, however, admit to stealing from his legal clients and his firm. He also confessed on the record to asking a relative to shoot him in that staged roadside incident. Alex finished his testimony the next day.

23:44 The record shows Judge Newman dismissed the jury immediately after it concluded. The defense officially rested their case on February 27 and asked for a directed verdict, which the judge quickly denied. The state then lost a reply case. Wilson personally conducted the direct examination of their final crime scene expert. When those court proceedings finally kicked off, the public could not look away. Because of the intense public interest in the case, the verdict would later be transmitted live across the United States on major broadcast and

24:12 cable news networks. It is not hard to see why news outlets called it the trial of the century. You had a disgraced lawyer from a powerful local dynasty sitting at the defense table accused of killing his own wife and son. The coverage went far beyond the local news cycle and turned a double homicide into a true crime sensation. The public interest in the case was intense. The media machine just kept churning out new material year after year. In 2024, a television series called Storm of Suspicion dedicated two full episodes to the saga.

24:42 They called the first part fatal fog, focusing entirely on the bow crash, while the second part covered the murders at the estate. The content never really stopped coming. Hula released a project in 2025 called Death in the Family. By 2026, Netflix dropped another documentary specifically focused on his unconvicted status after that ruling. The sheer volume of podcasts, articles, and television specials made the case impossible to ignore. But in a courtroom, the only thing that matters is what the evidence actually

25:10 shows. The jury had to step into that highly charged environment and try to tune out the national obsession. That national obsession eventually bled right into the jury room. Colton County clerk of court, Becky Hill, published a book about the trial called Behind the Doors of Justice, but the record shows she did not write all of it. Her co-author, Neil Gordon, discovered she actually plagiarized excerpts from a BBC news reporter named Holly Hondrick. Hill passed a stolen text off as her own words. Once the plagiarism was exposed,

25:36 the book was quickly withdrawn from circulation. Hill's legal troubles did not stop there. In May 2025, she was charged with three felonies following an independent state investigation. By December of that year, she pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice, perjury, and misconduct in office. She admitted to revealing sealed court exhibits to a member of the media and lying about it. She also confessed to using her elected office to promote her book. The judge sentenced her to three years of probation.

26:03 The fallout from her actions is still playing out in the legal system. On May 18, 2026, just days after his murder convictions were vacated, Alex filed a federal lawsuit against Hill. He officially accused the former clerk of violating his civil rights. That federal lawsuit against Rebecca Hill is just the latest twist in a legal saga that keeps rewriting itself. To understand how we got here, we have to look at exactly what happened inside that jury room. The public record now includes sworn affidavits from the jurors who decided

26:31 Alex's fate. Those documents show exactly how the tampering played out. One juror testified that when deliberations began, Hill explicitly told them it should not take long. That same juror admitted in a sworn statement that she had questions about Alex's guilt. She ultimately voted to convict because she felt pressured by the other jurors. Other jurors came forward with similar stories about Hill's behavior. One testified that Hill told them to watch Alex's body language while he was on the stand. Another said the clerk called the day of Alex's

27:00 testimony an epic day. The person responsible for the jury was actively trying to steer their decision. None of this was known when the jury returned a guilty verdict on all four counts on March 2, 2023. At the time, Judge Newman denied a motion for a mistrial. He stated on the record that the evidence of guilt was overwhelming. The next morning at 10,008 a.m., Alex received two consecutive life sentences without parole. It looked like the book was finally closed on the Murdoch murders, but the justice system demands an impartial jury untainted by external forces.

27:32 When the state Supreme Court reviewed the juror affidavits, they issued a scathing, unanimous opinion. The justices describe Hill's conduct as a breathtaking and disgraceful effort to undermine the process. That brings us to the massive ruling on May 13, 2026. They ruled that her actions denied Alex his constitutional right to a fair trial. The decision wiped out the guilty verdicts completely. But this story is far from over. Attorney General Allen Wilson reminded the public that Alex is not going free,

28:00 as he is still serving 40 years for those financial crimes. Wilson said he plans to retry the case. We will have to wait and see what a second trial uncovers. Read the file, form your own conclusion. That's it for this one. Thanks for hanging out with me. This has been Crime Time Snacks, and I'll catch you next time.