Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal (2023) s01e03 Episode Script
No Secrets Are Safe
1
Hampton County 911,
what is your emergency?
Hello, I was just goin' down
along Crocketville Road.
I see somebody layin' out.
And is it in the road
or on the side of the road?
In the road.
- In the road?
- Somebody's gonna hit him.
We'll get an officer
headed out that way.
- Okay.
- All right.
In 2019, our news outlet
was on the front lines of the boat crash.
And then in 2021, the double homicide.
While covering the death
of Paul and Maggie Murdaugh,
we'd received an anonymous tip
on our website
about a highway-patrol report
for the death of Stephen Smith in 2015.
Stephen Smith's body was found
in the middle of a rural highway
in Hampton County,
right around the corner
from where his car was later found.
Started workin' sources.
Who's Stephen Smith?
What What was his story?
And that's when I started
listening to the interviews
those officers taped back in 2015.
Trooper Rowell, this incident
that occurred on July the 8th of 2015,
just kind of go through it with me.
From what we've gathered so far,
a nice, you know, young man
had mechanical problems
with his vehicle on the way home.
Run outta fuel or had some kinda problem,
and started walkin'.
Um, I came out about 4:30 that mornin'.
When I got up to the scene,
I noticed a young, white male
lyin' in the roadway
with severe head trauma.
Nothing at the scene appeared
that it was a vehicular accident.
No torn clothes.
His shoes were still on his feet.
Cell phone still in his pocket.
This is a dark country road.
But if someone's gonna be
the victim of a vehicular strike,
you're probably not
gonna find 'em in the road.
You're probably not gonna find 'em
with loose-fitting shoes still on them.
Injuries that I noticed
to this young man was to his head.
Not gonna find them
with the blood patterns
the way they found the blood patterns.
Probably not gonna find them, again,
positioned the way he was positioned.
People looked at this, and the report
specifically questioned these things.
The problem is, nobody dug deeper.
Like I said,
we don't know for sure.
We haven't had anybody
to tell us anything different.
So I reached out
to my sources at the agency,
obtained a copy of the report,
verified that it was authentic,
and immediately noticed
Buster Murdaugh was in the report.
Me and Mallory and Connor,
we were in high school
at the same time as Stephen.
He was always a very sweet person,
just always nice.
Loved his friends.
He was a happy person.
Stephen and I became friends
when I was in tenth grade.
I just always thought he was so funny,
and I admired his personality so much,
because he just did not give a shit
about what people thought about him.
He was always himself.
He was always, like, dancing around,
and singin' and, you know, just hilarious.
I was stayin' with Mallory.
It happened just a couple of roads away
from where she lives.
We were just like, you know,
scared for someone to end up dead
in the middle of the road.
I mean, that's unheard of in,
you know, Hampton County.
When it first happened,
when he first was killed,
the town rallied in such
a very supportive way for the family,
and wantin' to figure out what happened.
But then his case just disappeared.
Stephen's case went cold.
And his mom, Sandy Smith,
hired a private investigator.
The first thing you wanna do
as an investigator is see all the work
that has been done
prior to your involvement.
In South Carolina, the highway patrol
does all death investigations
related to motor-vehicle accidents.
So for the first few weeks,
the highway patrol's hot and heavy,
out interviewing
as many people as they can.
Associates of Stephen,
friends of Stephen, schoolmates, so forth.
Case number on this
will be CL-062.
Kinda wanted
to touch base with you.
It's in Obviously it's in reference
to the Stephen Smith murder investigation.
- Do you know what I'm talkin' about?
- Oh yes, sir. I do.
Just go ahead and tell me,
you know, what you heard.
From what I was originally
told was he was struck by a car.
This, that, and the other.
I heard he got hit by a car.
They say
it was like a hit-and-run.
I haven't really gotten all,
like, one clear story.
I can tell you this.
He didn't get hit by no car.
Well,
recently I heard that these
two, maybe three young men
were in a vehicle.
I guess they were attemptin' to mess
around with him or somethin' like that.
But it's all rumor. Nobody claims
to be the source of any information.
They heard it from somebody else.
I need to try to find
somebody who's willin',
you know,
to give me some solid information.
And I understand
I understand your reservation.
Because I've heard that people
associated with his name
have been goin' around, kinda
Not Well
Kinda threatenin' or puttin' the heat
on people, sayin', you know,
"Keep your mouth closed
if you heard somethin'."
She was like,
"You'd never believe who I heard did it."
And then she said his name
and I was, like, really shocked.
Y'all have heard
I did hear names, and I'm Um
Or heard a name.
And that name was
He goes by Buster Murdaugh.
- Buster Murdaugh.
- Buster Murdaugh.
Everybody keeps comin' up
to me and sayin' it was Murdaugh boys.
Over and over and over again.
And when I originally heard this,
I was thinking
of the younger Murdaugh boy,
Buster's little brother, Paul,
because Paul's more the "my last name
is Murdaugh and I can do whatever."
- Know what I mean?
- Yeah.
Everybody's kinda
shy to say that out, you know what I mean?
Because of
of the I don't wanna say power,
but of the
The name, you know,
it brings a certain standard
when you say "Murdaugh" in Hampton County.
Listening to these interviews,
it's pretty clear.
Stephen's death
is now intertwined with the Murdaughs.
So the only rumor you heard
is possibly Buster havin'
some type of relationship with Stephen?
Yes, sir.
I was a science teacher
at Wade Hampton.
There was a rumor
that Stephen and Buster were friends.
Stephen was real smart,
and had actually helped Buster
with some papers,
and, um, I guess tutoring him,
for lack of a better word.
Stephen Smith was gay,
and he lived in Hampton County.
God knows
that couldn't have been easy on him,
being from a town like that, though,
where it's not really socially acceptable,
and he probably got talked about.
There were so many rumors swirling around
that Buster and Stephen
were intimate together.
Being gay in the Murdaugh family
would have been looked down upon.
I've known
the Murdaugh family, like I said,
pretty much my whole life.
Hampton's not a Not a very big town.
I feel like they wouldn't want anything
happening to their reputation,
or name, or anything like that.
As soon as the Murdaugh name
was tossed into the mix,
of havin' somethin' to do with,
like, relationship-wise with Stephen,
um, I feel like the view on his case
changed entirely.
It went from finding justice for Stephen
to defending the Murdaughs
and makin' sure that everyone knew
that they had nothin' to do with it.
Even if they had, like,
people didn't want to consider that.
Can you tell me what you heard
about the Stephen Smith incident?
I don't know.
It's strictly hearsay from all I know.
Well, I mean,
at this point it's kinda, you know,
we'll take whatever we can get.
The stories that went around
that I've heard so many times
were that Buster and Stephen
had a secret relationship,
and they were wantin'
to come out to Buster's family.
And then the rumors continued to flow
about how, the night that Stephen died,
he had been on the way home from school
and his car had run out of gas.
I just know
that he said it was
Buster and maybe one or two other people.
They were ridin' down 601.
Saw the car on the side of the road.
I guess saw the boy walkin'.
Rumor goes,
Stephen felt comfortable enough
to call Buster for help,
and Buster just so happens
to be in the area
on the way home from a softball tournament
with his friend.
They were attemptin' to,
I don't wanna say,
you know, mess around with him,
or somethin' like that.
I believe
that he picked Stephen up
and was fooling Stephen into thinkin'
they were takin' him home,
but I think they got a little ways
down the road,
and that's when it all started to unravel.
I believe that the Murdaughs
did whatever the hell it took
to keep everyone's mouth shut that night.
Someone told me
that it was Buster, and I was like,
nothing was gonna be done about it
because of who he was.
The day that Stephen passed away
Randy Murdaugh was the second person
to call my dad, after the coroner.
And he said he wanted to take the case
and it would be free of charge
and everything.
It's kinda weird.
The Murdaughs know that.
They know that he's
That he's on our radar.
I'm gonna talk to Buster here soon
and say, "Look, man, you know,
you need to come clean about this."
"If it was an accident,
you just need to come clean about it."
You know? "Let's get this process out
and let's get this family some closure."
I'd wanna talk to Buster.
I-I'd wanna talk to Alex.
But nothing happens in this case. Nothing.
Nobody investigates anything anymore.
This case just fades away.
In the highway-patrol tapes,
the Murdaugh name is mentioned
numerous times by numerous people,
but it doesn't appear
anyone ever interviewed Buster
or anyone else in the Murdaugh family.
Why not?
Within one month
of his body bein' found,
we were hearin' all of these rumors
about a possible Murdaugh connection.
And I've learned as a reporter
that if you hear the same rumors
from different groups of people
wherever you go,
it's either a very good rumor
or there's some truth to it.
So we did a story
in the Thanksgiving 2015 paper,
and Sandy Smith
basically appealed to the community.
"My son was killed."
"If you know somethin', please tell us."
"We just want answers. We want closure."
So we could not
put the Murdaugh name in a story
unless we wanted to face lawsuits.
We said, "A prominent, well-known family
was rumored to be involved."
Everybody knew who we were talking about.
We published the story and we waited.
People would come up to me
in the Piggly Wiggly, pat me on the back.
"We're so thankful you ran that story."
"So proud of you
to have the courage to do it."
I mean, we did everything
but put the Murdaugh name in the story.
But the story did no good.
Nobody ever came forward.
Tell me about Morgan.
Because she was hearing that rumor
and she just had started dating Paul.
Morgan told me
she talked to the Murdaughs
about the rumors with Buster,
and his friends, and Stephen,
and that Paul might have been with them.
When I first started dating Paul,
this girl had messaged me on Facebook,
just letting me know
that she had reasons to believe
that it could've been Paul or Buster
that had killed Stephen.
Mr. Alex, Maggie,
Buster, Paul and I, we were all home.
We were sitting in the kitchen.
We had just gotten done eating.
And then I asked him, I said,
"Why is this girl saying this?"
He kind of just laughed it off
and they said,
"We wouldn't kill that faggot."
And I was like
Looking back now,
that was the first red flag
that I ignored.
But I was like, "They're the Murdaughs."
Surely these people
wouldn't just murder someone.
911, where's your emergency?
My housekeeper has fallen
and her head is bleeding.
- I cannot get her up.
- Where'd she fall from?
The She fell going up the steps.
The brick steps.
Okay,
so is she outside or inside?
Outside.
Okay,
is she able to talk to you guys at all
or is she unconscious now?
She's not unconscious.
She's just mumblin'.
The other lady said
she had tried to stand up
and fell down again?
No, I was holdin' her up.
Okay.
She told me to turn her loose
and was trying to use her arm,
but then she fell back over.
Okay,
do you guys know who she is?
She works for us.
How old is she?
I'm not sure. Like, 58 maybe.
Do you know what her name is?
Gloria Satterfield.
Do you know if she's ever
had a stroke or anything before?
Ma'am, can you stop asking
I already
have them on the way.
Gloria Satterfield
was the family maid,
and in February of 2018,
she was at the house.
And what her family were told
is that she tripped over the family dogs
on the stairs, and fell backward,
and hit her head violently and died.
She really wasn't responsive to us
the whole time she was in the hospital.
Yeah.
From the day she got in the hospital
to the day she died,
she could not tell us what happened.
I remember knowing
that Miss Gloria was in the hospital.
And Alex came home one day
and he said
that he just went and visited her.
And then I think it was, like,
two days later that, um, she had died.
Paul took Gloria's death very hard.
He cried and he hurt.
I remember leavin' her funeral,
and he was just in the truck with me,
and he was just goin' over stories
that he had with her, and memories, and
Um, so he was very affected
by Gloria's death.
But the day that I found out
that she was tripped
and she had broken ribs
and a really bad brain injury,
I just felt in my heart that, like,
something had happened to her,
and it wasn't by the dogs.
Mr. Alex,
he was a very hard person to read.
And at the time,
he was severely addicted to painkillers.
You know,
Paul would stay the weekend at the house
and just make sure,
like, his dad was detoxing.
And I stayed there one time, and I was
Alex is already a really pale man,
but you could see through him,
'cause he's on the couch
and he's just, like,
rocking on the couch and completely pale.
Like it was so It was heartbreaking
to watch, but Paul
Paul really wanted to help his dad.
There was this time
where Miss Gloria had found drugs
taped in little baggies
under Alex's bed in Hampton.
Paul was really protective
over his dad's health.
Paul was aware of his drug use.
So Gloria wanted to let Paul know,
because Gloria was scared
to go to Maggie about it.
She might've been scared
she was gonna lose her job,
or Maggie would say
that she was snooping or something.
This was early 2018,
within the same year that she had died.
She knew too much.
You think Gloria knew too much
and that's why Gloria is not here?
Mm-hm.
When she died,
I began hearin' rumors.
I was at the hardware store one day,
and somebody saw
Maggie Murdaugh walk by, and they said,
"There goes old Maggie Murder."
And I said,
"Why are you callin' that lady that?"
And they said, "Well, you know she pushed
the housekeeper down the stairs."
One version of the rumor was that Paul
pushed the housekeeper down the stairs.
One version was that Maggie did it.
I never really understood it.
But, uh, there's been rumors,
you know, hearsay,
that Paul might've had
somethin' to do with her death.
And I'm I'll tell you right now
on the whole world, that's a lie.
He, uh
He would never hurt her.
I remember leavin' her funeral.
Alex told Paul
that he was gonna sue himself
for wrongful death
and give them the money.
And he told Paul and I that directly.
Alex said that he was going
to file a claim
against his insurance company,
because their dogs tripped Gloria up,
so that he could help Gloria's sons out
and look out for them,
since they had lost a mother
and it had happened on his property.
I called the caretaker
at the Murdaugh Moselle property,
Ronnie Freeman.
I wanted to ask him,
was he around these people long enough
to overhear conversation
about Stephen Smith's death.
The answer to the question was no.
But during that interview, he brought up
the whole situation
involving Gloria Satterfield.
Been gettin' to work
at that time at 7:30,
so Gloria probably come through
at about 8:30.
Walkin' up to the house,
she got a McDonald's cup in one hand,
her purse on her shoulder,
like she does every morning.
And then Maggie calls me
within 15 minutes later.
I asked her what the hell happened,
and she was hysterical.
"You gotta get here.
Gloria fell. There's blood everywhere."
Her feet were above her head.
We needed to at least
get her body horizontal.
So Paul, you know, grabs her legs.
I grab both of her shoulders
to get her horizontal.
So then EMS arrives.
And it's you, Paul, and Maggie.
Investigative reports
say Alex talked to Gloria,
and she said that the dog tripped her.
That's not true. He wasn't there.
So then, you're saying that Alex
is still not there when EMS leaves?
Correct.
I'm meeting
with Alexander Murdaugh.
Mr. Murdaugh, you understand
I'm recording this statement?
- Yes.
- With your permission?
- Yes.
- Your full name?
Richard Alexander Murdaugh.
And, um
Do you go by Alexander?
I go by Alex.
Okay.
How long would you estimate
that Gloria had been doin' work
for you and/or your family?
She's been workin'
for our family for,
hoo,
close to 20 years, I would estimate.
And no, she babysat my children
when they were
When my youngest was an infant. So
And were you able
to speak with Gloria
before she was taken away
in the ambulance?
- I was.
- Okay.
Did you ask her what happened?
She indicated that the dogs
had caused her to fall.
Okay. So there was no witness
to the chain of events.
- The fall itself?
- Right.
No, sir. Not that I'm aware of.
Okay.
In Paul's head, I think he really believed
that his dogs tripped her,
and that made himself feel better,
knowing his dad was gonna
do this great thing and sue himself,
and make sure that her sons
and that her family were gonna be okay.
That's why I've never said anything
about my suspicions.
It's just super weird that within
the same year she had found Alex's drugs,
told Paul,
Paul was forcing his dad to detox
Like, I just don't
I think somethin' happened to her.
And I And I don't think
it was handled properly.
Every one of these dead bodies
has got a story that Alex Murdaugh tells
that suits his needs,
that maintains
that empire that they built.
You have a death in 2015
that's very suspicious.
You have another one three years later,
also suspicious.
And then in the aftermath
of Paul and Maggie's murder at Moselle,
that's when the floodgates really open.
And now to more breaking news.
This about
that double-homicide investigation.
Two members of a South Carolina family.
State investigators have reopened
a separate death investigation from 2015
in connection with the deaths
of Paul and Margaret Murdaugh.
The South Carolina
Department of Law Enforcement,
they would not say what evidence
lead to that decision,
or whether the Murdaugh family
was involved in any way.
Within a couple of weeks
after the double homicides at Moselle,
state investigators say,
"We are reopening the investigation
into the death of Stephen Smith,
because of evidence we found
investigating the double homicides."
The once prominent
South Carolina attorney Alex Murdaugh,
he now faces multiple accusations.
There are multiple cases
unraveling in the public eye.
I think that Alex's world
was slowly falling to pieces around him.
He didn't know what to do.
And then, behind the scenes,
the Murdaugh law firm discovers that Alex
was potentially
misappropriating money from clients.
They called him out on it
and forced him to resign.
The law firm held
a come-to-Jesus meeting and said,
"We know you've been stealing money."
"We're gonna investigate this,
but even worse,
you're no longer one of us."
"We're gonna cut ties."
"The law firm that your great-grandfather
started is done with you."
He learned that his world
was about to unravel,
and we gotta put ourselves
in the mind of this character.
Now Alex Murdaugh is a desperate man.
I was actually
with Miley and Connor.
Someone got a phone call
that Mr. Alex had gotten shot.
And me and Miley
just looked at each other.
It didn't seem real at the time.
You get the text, "Alex Murdaugh
shot, side of the road, Hampton County."
And you're like, "What the No."
A mystery in South Carolina
gets even deeper.
Officials telling Fox News
53-year-old attorney Alex Murdaugh
was shot and wounded today
in Hampton County, South Carolina.
No word on his condition.
Alex was airlifted
to the hospital.
He'd been shot in the head
in broad daylight
while he was changing a tire
on the side of the road.
We reported Alex Murdaugh
was airlifted to hospital in Savannah.
"No, no, no, no."
"No, he was flown to Charleston,
not Savannah."
"FITSNews is wrong. They don't know
what they're talking about."
The guy was in Savannah.
His lawyers lied
to the reporters
to keep them from goin' there.
It's like,
"Are they deliberately confusing us?"
And then the 911 calls come out.
Hampton County 911.
What is your emergency?
I stopped.
I got a flat tire, and I stopped,
and somebody stopped to help me.
And they tried to shoot me.
Were you shot?
Yes.
But, I mean, I'm okay.
I can't drive.
Okay.
And I'm bleedin' a lot.
Where?
What part of your body?
I'm not sure. Somewhere on my head.
What's your name?
Alex Murdaugh.
Alex Murdaugh?
Yes, ma'am.
Oh, okay.
It took a couple of days
for the story to completely unravel.
Alex did not feel like he could go forward
and continue down that path. Um
And he felt like ending his life.
Alex acknowledged wrongdoing.
"It was an attempted suicide on my part."
He figures his last play is to make sure
that his surviving son, Buster, is okay.
If he was going to end his life,
he wanted it to benefit his son.
So he has the idea to hire someone, who
he knows, to, um, shoot him in the head.
Yes, we're on
Salkehatchie Road.
There is a man on the side of the road
with blood all over him.
And he's wavin' his hands.
He's just layin' there
wavin' his hands around?
He looks fine,
but it kind of looks like a setup.
So we didn't stop.
I don't blame you.
So all that was kinda strange.
And then, a few days into it,
people raised significant questions
about the version
that was coming from Alex's lawyers.
Joining us now,
exclusively, is Alex Murdaugh's attorney.
He went to his drug dealer
and asked him to shoot him,
and within 30 minutes,
his drug dealer had shot him in the head.
The murder of, um, his son and wife,
uh, 90 days ago
uh, took a tremendous toll on him.
Most people couldn't get through that.
He got through it with the use of opioids.
Within a couple weeks,
Alex Murdaugh went to rehab
for his secret opioid addiction.
And almost immediately,
police ultimately start looking
into a former client of Alex's.
Curtis Edward Smith.
Curtis Smith is the man
accused of shooting Alex Murdaugh.
He appeared in front of a judge
in Hampton County as well.
Authorities say he's facing charges
for assisted suicide,
insurance fraud, and more.
Curtis Edward Smith
subsequently said,
"I felt like I was bein' set up."
"He called me out there
to help him, I thought,
and then kind of, you know,
staged this struggle with a gun."
But he said he absolutely
did not conspire with Alex to kill him.
Does your client maintain
utter and complete innocence in this case?
- Go ahead.
- If I'd have shot him, he'd be dead.
He's alive.
These reports that your client stole
millions of dollars from the law firm.
Did he use all of that money to buy drugs,
or did he use some of the millions
for other things?
The vast majority of it,
as I understand it, was used to buy drugs.
That's a lot of Oxy.
Right, so who is Eddie Smith?
Who is this cousin, Eddie?
Well, we started doin'
some diggin' on him,
and what we found
was over 160,000 in incremental checks,
most of them under ten grand,
from October 2020 to May of 2021.
I did the math on the OxyContin.
You know how much OxyContin
that man could've bought?
114 years' worth.
And that's if he's a hard-core addict.
He's not buying OxyContin with that.
Maybe a little of it, but not all of it.
Where'd it go? Where is that money?
But the key takeaway is not necessarily
where it is, but when it happened.
He's not only depositing a check
days before the double homicide,
but Curtis Eddie Smith's
getting checks directly afterward.
Some of them totally more than $24,000.
I'm told by sources
the more credible theory, in theory,
is that he was setting Eddie up, right?
So he wasn't gonna ask Eddie to shoot him.
He was gonna come, you know,
make it look like
Eddie came out there to shoot him,
and then he had to shoot Eddie
in his self-defense.
I think it was
The whole thing is hinky from the word go.
And to make
then Eddie the suspect in the murder?
Mm-hm. And not just his
Not just his attempted murder,
but somehow culpable
in the murders of Maggie and Paul.
SLED says they're looking
at these allegations
that Murdaugh misappropriated funds
at the former law firm
that his family founded.
As we were standing here
moments ago,
five vehicles,
appeared to be law enforcement,
pulled out of one of the entrances
to the Moselle property
here in Colleton County.
We don't know what's going on.
We're gonna work to figure that out.
We do wanna say
five law-enforcement vehicles
just left this property here.
SLED announced
that they were opening an investigation
into Alex Murdaugh,
to his financial crimes.
That same day is the day that I got a tip
that they were executing
a search warrant at Moselle.
So I figured it was worth
driving out there,
putting my drone up
and seeing what I could get.
And as I was pulling up,
there were some official-looking trucks
pulling out of the driveway
and heading out.
So I thought I really missed everything.
It wasn't until a few days later,
when I was really
going through the footage
and seeing what I got,
that I noticed the guns.
My first thought was,
"This is a big deal."
I got the tip
that they were executing a search warrant,
and now I have footage of them
unloading eight guns out of the house.
It clearly captured John Marvin carrying
two uncased rifles out to the truck.
They loaded up a few more things,
drove over to the kennels,
loaded up a hunting dog
and a couple more things, and then left.
John Marvin and Buster,
it could be them going on a hunting trip.
I'm not sure, you know.
Knowing that a double homicide
had recently occurred on that property,
and there were Murdaughs taking guns
off of the property, not the officials,
it can obviously lead someone to speculate
maybe one of these firearms
or some of these firearms
were pieces of evidence
that could be used against
the Murdaugh family in some capacity.
If SLED had the murder weapons,
we would know by now.
Guns are missin'.
They're still lookin' for 'em.
In the aftermath of the roadside shooting,
everyone realized he's lied,
been caught lyin'.
I think that was the moment
people finally began to question
whether Alex Murdaugh had something to do
with the murders of his wife and son.
Or at the very least,
that he wasn't telling the truth
about what happened to them.
He's lyin' about somethin'.
I began to have a bad taste in my mouth
toward members of the Murdaugh family,
like a lot of people in the community.
And our coroner, Angela Topper,
she goes back lookin' through
Hampton County coroner records,
and she stood up and pointed out
there was something fishy about 2018,
Gloria Satterfield,
another case that went under the radar.
She's seeing that this death
was ruled natural,
even though it was a trip and fall.
She's seein'
that there was no autopsy ever done.
So she wrote a letter to SLED
and asked SLED
to help her investigate this.
At the same time,
SLED has got reason
to investigate Alex's financial crimes.
Eventually, the Satterfield family
were readin' articles
all over the state of South Carolina
about how there was a death settlement.
Her sons didn't know anything
about a settlement.
They're lookin' at each other and said,
"I didn't get any money, did you?"
Whenever that came out
and it was in the paper,
and Eric called me
and he said, "Something isn't right."
It was like, "Holy cow."
'Cause the boys,
they haven't seen anything.
Nothin'. Not one red cent.
There appeared to be a lawsuit.
Money was recovered,
and none of it was paid to the clients,
which seemed to be an impossibility.
So we said,
"We will talk to the Murdaughs."
And we were expecting
we were gonna get this response
where they would say, "Oh, absolutely.
There's just a misunderstanding."
"The money's in a bank account."
Or, "It was put in a trust."
And we got silence.
And so the next thing we did
was we filed a lawsuit immediately
because we needed subpoena power
to be able to get
documents and information.
And we learned that Alex Murdaugh
was not practicing law.
Alex Murdaugh
was practicing stealin' money.
At the end of the day,
Alex recovered $4.3 million.
Our clients got none of that money.
Zero.
It's just puttin' the knife in us
and cuttin' it deep.
It perturbs me.
I get really PO'ed
knowing that's what's happened now.
He used her name. My sister.
His law firm suspected him.
We confirmed it.
This was not his first time
that he was gonna misappropriate money
from other clients of the Murdaugh firm.
We have evidence
that he did it many times predating this.
You don't lose your virginity
at $4.3 million.
Alex Murdaugh has misappropriated
millions and millions of dollars,
and it's a fraud that began in 2015,
and was the vehicle
to steal the Satterfield's money in 2019.
Ronnie and I met with SLED.
We contacted the FBI.
And so were we the genesis
for these criminal charges
to be brought against Alex Murdaugh?
Absolutely.
We have breaking news
into our newsroom.
The South Carolina
Law Enforcement Division
have taken Alex Murdaugh into custody.
This is Murdaugh's new mug shot.
These charges stem
from a SLED investigation
into misappropriated settlement funds
in the death of Gloria Satterfield.
Authorities accusing him
of stealing millions in insurance money,
which was meant to go
to the sons of Gloria Satterfield,
his family's longtime housekeeper,
who died after a purported
trip-and-fall incident at the Murdaughs'
South Carolina home in 2018.
So in October of 2021,
Murdaugh appears before South Carolina
circuit court judge Clifton Newman.
I am going for a denial of bond
at this time.
No one No one in that courtroom
expected him to deny Alex Murdaugh's bond.
No one saw this comin'.
That was the point Alex Murdaugh realized,
"Wait a minute,
this system that's been enabling me"
Suddenly they can't count on it anymore.
Alex Murdaugh is in a jail cell.
No secrets are safe now.
Alex pleaded the Fifth,
refusing to answer accusations
that he embezzled
potentially millions of dollars
from his family's lucrative law firm
and his clients.
In October, the Court heard evidence
that Buster was gambling in Las Vegas
and selling off assets to the tune
of hundreds of thousands of dollars
for his father.
There have been some pictures
entered into evidence
of John Marvin and Buster
at the casino out in Las Vegas,
right at the same time that Alex Murdaugh
is in the county jail.
Did you get to gamble any?
Yeah.
Yeah, so I did go gambling, and then,
the next day, there was an article created
about how I'm misusing funds.
By gamblin'?
Yeah. Someone took a picture
of me and John Marvin in the casino.
You're kiddin' me.
Uh-uh.
What a fuckin' Are you kiddin' me?
No.
How'd they recognize you?
Apparently,
I'm a national figure, I think.
Listening to the jailhouse calls
has been fascinating, just to hear Alex.
Sometimes, you know,
you're aware that you're being taped.
But then, after a certain point,
I think you start to fall
into a natural pattern of conversation
and talk about your Super Bowl winnings
of, you know, meat sticks in the canteen.
Hey, I hit nine out of 11 games on
Sunday. Nine out of 11,
that's pretty damn hard.
Yeah.
I won, like, six soups,
four beef sticks
Well, that's good.
Your party has answered.
- With a prepaid collect call from
- Alex.
All phone calls are subject
to monitoring and recording.
- Hello?
- Hey, bud.
Jim and them told me they, the grand jury,
indicted a bunch more things
on the last Friday.
But you know that's just overkill, right?
Yeah, I mean
I mean, they're just trying
to pile it on me now, you know that.
Yeah, I'm aware.
But I can take it.
Stephen Smith and Gloria
and all that bullshit.
Are they still tryin' to say out there,
there are some mysteries
surrounding Gloria's death?
About how she died?
Sayin' what now?
About how she died. Are they still
tryin' to make some innuendo there?
I don't know. I, um
They still sayin' anything
about Stephen Smith?
- I don't think
- They still connecting to us?
Yeah, I don't think anybody
took to heart any of that.
SLED say there's no connection?
No.
SLED has not released anything.
They wouldn't even They didn't even
release a statement about
What was this most recent thing? Um
Something came out not long ago,
talkin' about how there's been, like,
a breakthrough in evidence
to do with, like,
the homicides.
We're comin' up to a year
since this crime took place,
and we're just now
startin' to hear about forensic evidence
that links Alex Murdaugh
directly to the scene of this crime.
Will Folks. How are you, sir?
The coroner says that Paul
and Maggie were killed at around 9:00 p.m.
According to Alex Murdaugh,
he was not at Moselle until 10:07 p.m.
and finds his wife and son murdered.
According to our sources,
high-velocity impact spatter,
some kind of fluid
on Alex Murdaugh's clothes,
places him at Moselle
when the murders occur.
It's not necessarily what it is,
it's where it puts him
at the moment Maggie and Paul were killed.
There's no other place he could've been
than with at least one of these victims
at the moment they died.
So the next thing we got was the video
from Paul Murdaugh's cell phone
at 8:44 p.m.
Now the video on Paul's phone,
you can't see Alex on it,
but you can hear him talking,
and the time stamp
is right before the murders took place.
A second piece of evidence
that conclusively places Alex Murdaugh
at the scene of the murders
at or around the time they happen.
And this breaks this thing wide open
as it relates to Alex's
potential involvement.
Because for the first time,
we know he was there when it happened.
Maybe he didn't kill his wife and son.
We don't know that for sure.
But we know he was there when they died.
We know he knows something
about what happened to them.
High-velocity spatter
is associated with the use
of a high-velocity weapon,
like a rifle,
especially used at close range.
FITSNews also first reported
that Paul Murdaugh's phone
was found on his body at the scene.
And we've confirmed with that same source
that on that phone there is video
which contains audio of Alex Murdaugh
talking with his wife, Maggie,
close to the time of the murders.
Alex Murdaugh is not seen on the video,
but he is heard speaking with her.
And that recording has a time stamp,
which could be key to the investigation.
One of my editors suggested,
go ahead and write a breakin'- news thing
in case Alex Murdaugh
is charged with homicide.
And I can't bring myself to do it.
That's an awful thing
to even wrap your head around,
that a man could kill his wife and child,
and if it's true,
this is the fall of a dynasty.
This is a fall from grace.
Alex Murdaugh is used
to walking into court as a lawyer,
but this week,
he's not only been disbarred,
now he's facing two counts of murder
in the deaths of his wife and his son.
Now Murdaugh's legal team
immediately responded to this
this afternoon,
with a statement saying, in part,
"Alex did not have any motive whatsoever
to murder them."
"We are immediately
filing a motion for a speedy trial."
We are here today
on the case
of the State versus Richard Alex Murdaugh.
He has been indicted
by the Colleton County grand jury
for 2022 G.S. 15-592.
That charge is for the murder
of Maggie Murdaugh.
2022 G.S. 15-593,
that is for the murder of Paul Murdaugh.
Uh, Richard Alex Murdaugh.
If that is your name,
please raise your right hand.
Do you waive reading of the indictments?
Yes, sir.
What say you, Richard Alex Murdaugh?
Are you guilty or not guilty
of the felonies
wherein you stand indicted?
Not guilty.
- How shall you be tried?
- By God and my country.
Thank you.
Bond will therefore be denied.
Right, thank you all.
I think Mr. Alex,
facing all this heat from the media,
from the court
He's about to be exposed from all angles
of cheating and lying and stealing.
I do believe that Alex Murdaugh
would kill Paul and Maggie.
I don't care who you are,
what you've done, no one deserves that.
Everything
that Mr. Alex's going through right now.
If all of that's actually true,
then, you know,
you kinda You kinda get what you ask for.
Everybody's sufferin' for those mistakes,
and some mistakes are a lot bigger
than others and that you can't take back.
I lost a really, really big piece,
uh, of my heart.
You know, I was lost.
Started partyin' again,
you know, like I was a teenager.
You know, I
You know, I acted stupid for a while.
I tried to run away from everything.
I don't know, I just think
everybody's kinda got the wrong idea
about what's goin' on.
I've heard all kinds of stuff. I've heard
people say that Paul deserved to die.
He made a mistake, and, yeah,
there's a lot of people sufferin' for it,
but nobody deserves to die.
After the boating accident
and Paul and Maggie's murders,
everyone as a community was very shook.
I've hit a lot of low points.
You're tryin' to cope,
but you're also tryin'
to be a regular 20-year-old.
To be able to sit here today
and to tell my story
without having to be scared anymore,
and going through
all the suppressed emotions
and the stuff that I try to forget,
I think that's strength.
Our relationship's changed drastically
after four years.
It was hard for me
to start hangin' out with Miley again
after we lost Mallory,
just because I felt guilty in a way.
Miley and Mallory,
they were best friends too,
and I didn't want it to feel like
anyone was replacing anyone
in each other's lives.
We're one of the only ones
that understand what we're goin' through.
I mean, I think about her every day,
and it's hard to move on without her,
but a good way to honor her
is keepin' her name alive.
What justice looks like
for me now
is getting the answers that we need.
I wanna know what happened to Gloria.
South Carolina authorities
say they received permission
from a Satterfield estate lawyer
to exhume the body of Gloria Satterfield
and further investigate
the circumstances of her death.
I wanna know who killed Paul and Maggie,
and who killed Stephen.
I still think that Mr. Alex
is hiding things,
and if you ever meet him,
I'm sure you'd get that feeling too.
Your party has answered.
All phone calls are subject
to monitoring and recording.
- Hey.
- Hey.
What you doin'?
Nothin'. What's up?
Hey, Bus, I meant to ask you,
did Netflix put somethin' out
about all this?
Hampton County 911,
what is your emergency?
Hello, I was just goin' down
along Crocketville Road.
I see somebody layin' out.
And is it in the road
or on the side of the road?
In the road.
- In the road?
- Somebody's gonna hit him.
We'll get an officer
headed out that way.
- Okay.
- All right.
In 2019, our news outlet
was on the front lines of the boat crash.
And then in 2021, the double homicide.
While covering the death
of Paul and Maggie Murdaugh,
we'd received an anonymous tip
on our website
about a highway-patrol report
for the death of Stephen Smith in 2015.
Stephen Smith's body was found
in the middle of a rural highway
in Hampton County,
right around the corner
from where his car was later found.
Started workin' sources.
Who's Stephen Smith?
What What was his story?
And that's when I started
listening to the interviews
those officers taped back in 2015.
Trooper Rowell, this incident
that occurred on July the 8th of 2015,
just kind of go through it with me.
From what we've gathered so far,
a nice, you know, young man
had mechanical problems
with his vehicle on the way home.
Run outta fuel or had some kinda problem,
and started walkin'.
Um, I came out about 4:30 that mornin'.
When I got up to the scene,
I noticed a young, white male
lyin' in the roadway
with severe head trauma.
Nothing at the scene appeared
that it was a vehicular accident.
No torn clothes.
His shoes were still on his feet.
Cell phone still in his pocket.
This is a dark country road.
But if someone's gonna be
the victim of a vehicular strike,
you're probably not
gonna find 'em in the road.
You're probably not gonna find 'em
with loose-fitting shoes still on them.
Injuries that I noticed
to this young man was to his head.
Not gonna find them
with the blood patterns
the way they found the blood patterns.
Probably not gonna find them, again,
positioned the way he was positioned.
People looked at this, and the report
specifically questioned these things.
The problem is, nobody dug deeper.
Like I said,
we don't know for sure.
We haven't had anybody
to tell us anything different.
So I reached out
to my sources at the agency,
obtained a copy of the report,
verified that it was authentic,
and immediately noticed
Buster Murdaugh was in the report.
Me and Mallory and Connor,
we were in high school
at the same time as Stephen.
He was always a very sweet person,
just always nice.
Loved his friends.
He was a happy person.
Stephen and I became friends
when I was in tenth grade.
I just always thought he was so funny,
and I admired his personality so much,
because he just did not give a shit
about what people thought about him.
He was always himself.
He was always, like, dancing around,
and singin' and, you know, just hilarious.
I was stayin' with Mallory.
It happened just a couple of roads away
from where she lives.
We were just like, you know,
scared for someone to end up dead
in the middle of the road.
I mean, that's unheard of in,
you know, Hampton County.
When it first happened,
when he first was killed,
the town rallied in such
a very supportive way for the family,
and wantin' to figure out what happened.
But then his case just disappeared.
Stephen's case went cold.
And his mom, Sandy Smith,
hired a private investigator.
The first thing you wanna do
as an investigator is see all the work
that has been done
prior to your involvement.
In South Carolina, the highway patrol
does all death investigations
related to motor-vehicle accidents.
So for the first few weeks,
the highway patrol's hot and heavy,
out interviewing
as many people as they can.
Associates of Stephen,
friends of Stephen, schoolmates, so forth.
Case number on this
will be CL-062.
Kinda wanted
to touch base with you.
It's in Obviously it's in reference
to the Stephen Smith murder investigation.
- Do you know what I'm talkin' about?
- Oh yes, sir. I do.
Just go ahead and tell me,
you know, what you heard.
From what I was originally
told was he was struck by a car.
This, that, and the other.
I heard he got hit by a car.
They say
it was like a hit-and-run.
I haven't really gotten all,
like, one clear story.
I can tell you this.
He didn't get hit by no car.
Well,
recently I heard that these
two, maybe three young men
were in a vehicle.
I guess they were attemptin' to mess
around with him or somethin' like that.
But it's all rumor. Nobody claims
to be the source of any information.
They heard it from somebody else.
I need to try to find
somebody who's willin',
you know,
to give me some solid information.
And I understand
I understand your reservation.
Because I've heard that people
associated with his name
have been goin' around, kinda
Not Well
Kinda threatenin' or puttin' the heat
on people, sayin', you know,
"Keep your mouth closed
if you heard somethin'."
She was like,
"You'd never believe who I heard did it."
And then she said his name
and I was, like, really shocked.
Y'all have heard
I did hear names, and I'm Um
Or heard a name.
And that name was
He goes by Buster Murdaugh.
- Buster Murdaugh.
- Buster Murdaugh.
Everybody keeps comin' up
to me and sayin' it was Murdaugh boys.
Over and over and over again.
And when I originally heard this,
I was thinking
of the younger Murdaugh boy,
Buster's little brother, Paul,
because Paul's more the "my last name
is Murdaugh and I can do whatever."
- Know what I mean?
- Yeah.
Everybody's kinda
shy to say that out, you know what I mean?
Because of
of the I don't wanna say power,
but of the
The name, you know,
it brings a certain standard
when you say "Murdaugh" in Hampton County.
Listening to these interviews,
it's pretty clear.
Stephen's death
is now intertwined with the Murdaughs.
So the only rumor you heard
is possibly Buster havin'
some type of relationship with Stephen?
Yes, sir.
I was a science teacher
at Wade Hampton.
There was a rumor
that Stephen and Buster were friends.
Stephen was real smart,
and had actually helped Buster
with some papers,
and, um, I guess tutoring him,
for lack of a better word.
Stephen Smith was gay,
and he lived in Hampton County.
God knows
that couldn't have been easy on him,
being from a town like that, though,
where it's not really socially acceptable,
and he probably got talked about.
There were so many rumors swirling around
that Buster and Stephen
were intimate together.
Being gay in the Murdaugh family
would have been looked down upon.
I've known
the Murdaugh family, like I said,
pretty much my whole life.
Hampton's not a Not a very big town.
I feel like they wouldn't want anything
happening to their reputation,
or name, or anything like that.
As soon as the Murdaugh name
was tossed into the mix,
of havin' somethin' to do with,
like, relationship-wise with Stephen,
um, I feel like the view on his case
changed entirely.
It went from finding justice for Stephen
to defending the Murdaughs
and makin' sure that everyone knew
that they had nothin' to do with it.
Even if they had, like,
people didn't want to consider that.
Can you tell me what you heard
about the Stephen Smith incident?
I don't know.
It's strictly hearsay from all I know.
Well, I mean,
at this point it's kinda, you know,
we'll take whatever we can get.
The stories that went around
that I've heard so many times
were that Buster and Stephen
had a secret relationship,
and they were wantin'
to come out to Buster's family.
And then the rumors continued to flow
about how, the night that Stephen died,
he had been on the way home from school
and his car had run out of gas.
I just know
that he said it was
Buster and maybe one or two other people.
They were ridin' down 601.
Saw the car on the side of the road.
I guess saw the boy walkin'.
Rumor goes,
Stephen felt comfortable enough
to call Buster for help,
and Buster just so happens
to be in the area
on the way home from a softball tournament
with his friend.
They were attemptin' to,
I don't wanna say,
you know, mess around with him,
or somethin' like that.
I believe
that he picked Stephen up
and was fooling Stephen into thinkin'
they were takin' him home,
but I think they got a little ways
down the road,
and that's when it all started to unravel.
I believe that the Murdaughs
did whatever the hell it took
to keep everyone's mouth shut that night.
Someone told me
that it was Buster, and I was like,
nothing was gonna be done about it
because of who he was.
The day that Stephen passed away
Randy Murdaugh was the second person
to call my dad, after the coroner.
And he said he wanted to take the case
and it would be free of charge
and everything.
It's kinda weird.
The Murdaughs know that.
They know that he's
That he's on our radar.
I'm gonna talk to Buster here soon
and say, "Look, man, you know,
you need to come clean about this."
"If it was an accident,
you just need to come clean about it."
You know? "Let's get this process out
and let's get this family some closure."
I'd wanna talk to Buster.
I-I'd wanna talk to Alex.
But nothing happens in this case. Nothing.
Nobody investigates anything anymore.
This case just fades away.
In the highway-patrol tapes,
the Murdaugh name is mentioned
numerous times by numerous people,
but it doesn't appear
anyone ever interviewed Buster
or anyone else in the Murdaugh family.
Why not?
Within one month
of his body bein' found,
we were hearin' all of these rumors
about a possible Murdaugh connection.
And I've learned as a reporter
that if you hear the same rumors
from different groups of people
wherever you go,
it's either a very good rumor
or there's some truth to it.
So we did a story
in the Thanksgiving 2015 paper,
and Sandy Smith
basically appealed to the community.
"My son was killed."
"If you know somethin', please tell us."
"We just want answers. We want closure."
So we could not
put the Murdaugh name in a story
unless we wanted to face lawsuits.
We said, "A prominent, well-known family
was rumored to be involved."
Everybody knew who we were talking about.
We published the story and we waited.
People would come up to me
in the Piggly Wiggly, pat me on the back.
"We're so thankful you ran that story."
"So proud of you
to have the courage to do it."
I mean, we did everything
but put the Murdaugh name in the story.
But the story did no good.
Nobody ever came forward.
Tell me about Morgan.
Because she was hearing that rumor
and she just had started dating Paul.
Morgan told me
she talked to the Murdaughs
about the rumors with Buster,
and his friends, and Stephen,
and that Paul might have been with them.
When I first started dating Paul,
this girl had messaged me on Facebook,
just letting me know
that she had reasons to believe
that it could've been Paul or Buster
that had killed Stephen.
Mr. Alex, Maggie,
Buster, Paul and I, we were all home.
We were sitting in the kitchen.
We had just gotten done eating.
And then I asked him, I said,
"Why is this girl saying this?"
He kind of just laughed it off
and they said,
"We wouldn't kill that faggot."
And I was like
Looking back now,
that was the first red flag
that I ignored.
But I was like, "They're the Murdaughs."
Surely these people
wouldn't just murder someone.
911, where's your emergency?
My housekeeper has fallen
and her head is bleeding.
- I cannot get her up.
- Where'd she fall from?
The She fell going up the steps.
The brick steps.
Okay,
so is she outside or inside?
Outside.
Okay,
is she able to talk to you guys at all
or is she unconscious now?
She's not unconscious.
She's just mumblin'.
The other lady said
she had tried to stand up
and fell down again?
No, I was holdin' her up.
Okay.
She told me to turn her loose
and was trying to use her arm,
but then she fell back over.
Okay,
do you guys know who she is?
She works for us.
How old is she?
I'm not sure. Like, 58 maybe.
Do you know what her name is?
Gloria Satterfield.
Do you know if she's ever
had a stroke or anything before?
Ma'am, can you stop asking
I already
have them on the way.
Gloria Satterfield
was the family maid,
and in February of 2018,
she was at the house.
And what her family were told
is that she tripped over the family dogs
on the stairs, and fell backward,
and hit her head violently and died.
She really wasn't responsive to us
the whole time she was in the hospital.
Yeah.
From the day she got in the hospital
to the day she died,
she could not tell us what happened.
I remember knowing
that Miss Gloria was in the hospital.
And Alex came home one day
and he said
that he just went and visited her.
And then I think it was, like,
two days later that, um, she had died.
Paul took Gloria's death very hard.
He cried and he hurt.
I remember leavin' her funeral,
and he was just in the truck with me,
and he was just goin' over stories
that he had with her, and memories, and
Um, so he was very affected
by Gloria's death.
But the day that I found out
that she was tripped
and she had broken ribs
and a really bad brain injury,
I just felt in my heart that, like,
something had happened to her,
and it wasn't by the dogs.
Mr. Alex,
he was a very hard person to read.
And at the time,
he was severely addicted to painkillers.
You know,
Paul would stay the weekend at the house
and just make sure,
like, his dad was detoxing.
And I stayed there one time, and I was
Alex is already a really pale man,
but you could see through him,
'cause he's on the couch
and he's just, like,
rocking on the couch and completely pale.
Like it was so It was heartbreaking
to watch, but Paul
Paul really wanted to help his dad.
There was this time
where Miss Gloria had found drugs
taped in little baggies
under Alex's bed in Hampton.
Paul was really protective
over his dad's health.
Paul was aware of his drug use.
So Gloria wanted to let Paul know,
because Gloria was scared
to go to Maggie about it.
She might've been scared
she was gonna lose her job,
or Maggie would say
that she was snooping or something.
This was early 2018,
within the same year that she had died.
She knew too much.
You think Gloria knew too much
and that's why Gloria is not here?
Mm-hm.
When she died,
I began hearin' rumors.
I was at the hardware store one day,
and somebody saw
Maggie Murdaugh walk by, and they said,
"There goes old Maggie Murder."
And I said,
"Why are you callin' that lady that?"
And they said, "Well, you know she pushed
the housekeeper down the stairs."
One version of the rumor was that Paul
pushed the housekeeper down the stairs.
One version was that Maggie did it.
I never really understood it.
But, uh, there's been rumors,
you know, hearsay,
that Paul might've had
somethin' to do with her death.
And I'm I'll tell you right now
on the whole world, that's a lie.
He, uh
He would never hurt her.
I remember leavin' her funeral.
Alex told Paul
that he was gonna sue himself
for wrongful death
and give them the money.
And he told Paul and I that directly.
Alex said that he was going
to file a claim
against his insurance company,
because their dogs tripped Gloria up,
so that he could help Gloria's sons out
and look out for them,
since they had lost a mother
and it had happened on his property.
I called the caretaker
at the Murdaugh Moselle property,
Ronnie Freeman.
I wanted to ask him,
was he around these people long enough
to overhear conversation
about Stephen Smith's death.
The answer to the question was no.
But during that interview, he brought up
the whole situation
involving Gloria Satterfield.
Been gettin' to work
at that time at 7:30,
so Gloria probably come through
at about 8:30.
Walkin' up to the house,
she got a McDonald's cup in one hand,
her purse on her shoulder,
like she does every morning.
And then Maggie calls me
within 15 minutes later.
I asked her what the hell happened,
and she was hysterical.
"You gotta get here.
Gloria fell. There's blood everywhere."
Her feet were above her head.
We needed to at least
get her body horizontal.
So Paul, you know, grabs her legs.
I grab both of her shoulders
to get her horizontal.
So then EMS arrives.
And it's you, Paul, and Maggie.
Investigative reports
say Alex talked to Gloria,
and she said that the dog tripped her.
That's not true. He wasn't there.
So then, you're saying that Alex
is still not there when EMS leaves?
Correct.
I'm meeting
with Alexander Murdaugh.
Mr. Murdaugh, you understand
I'm recording this statement?
- Yes.
- With your permission?
- Yes.
- Your full name?
Richard Alexander Murdaugh.
And, um
Do you go by Alexander?
I go by Alex.
Okay.
How long would you estimate
that Gloria had been doin' work
for you and/or your family?
She's been workin'
for our family for,
hoo,
close to 20 years, I would estimate.
And no, she babysat my children
when they were
When my youngest was an infant. So
And were you able
to speak with Gloria
before she was taken away
in the ambulance?
- I was.
- Okay.
Did you ask her what happened?
She indicated that the dogs
had caused her to fall.
Okay. So there was no witness
to the chain of events.
- The fall itself?
- Right.
No, sir. Not that I'm aware of.
Okay.
In Paul's head, I think he really believed
that his dogs tripped her,
and that made himself feel better,
knowing his dad was gonna
do this great thing and sue himself,
and make sure that her sons
and that her family were gonna be okay.
That's why I've never said anything
about my suspicions.
It's just super weird that within
the same year she had found Alex's drugs,
told Paul,
Paul was forcing his dad to detox
Like, I just don't
I think somethin' happened to her.
And I And I don't think
it was handled properly.
Every one of these dead bodies
has got a story that Alex Murdaugh tells
that suits his needs,
that maintains
that empire that they built.
You have a death in 2015
that's very suspicious.
You have another one three years later,
also suspicious.
And then in the aftermath
of Paul and Maggie's murder at Moselle,
that's when the floodgates really open.
And now to more breaking news.
This about
that double-homicide investigation.
Two members of a South Carolina family.
State investigators have reopened
a separate death investigation from 2015
in connection with the deaths
of Paul and Margaret Murdaugh.
The South Carolina
Department of Law Enforcement,
they would not say what evidence
lead to that decision,
or whether the Murdaugh family
was involved in any way.
Within a couple of weeks
after the double homicides at Moselle,
state investigators say,
"We are reopening the investigation
into the death of Stephen Smith,
because of evidence we found
investigating the double homicides."
The once prominent
South Carolina attorney Alex Murdaugh,
he now faces multiple accusations.
There are multiple cases
unraveling in the public eye.
I think that Alex's world
was slowly falling to pieces around him.
He didn't know what to do.
And then, behind the scenes,
the Murdaugh law firm discovers that Alex
was potentially
misappropriating money from clients.
They called him out on it
and forced him to resign.
The law firm held
a come-to-Jesus meeting and said,
"We know you've been stealing money."
"We're gonna investigate this,
but even worse,
you're no longer one of us."
"We're gonna cut ties."
"The law firm that your great-grandfather
started is done with you."
He learned that his world
was about to unravel,
and we gotta put ourselves
in the mind of this character.
Now Alex Murdaugh is a desperate man.
I was actually
with Miley and Connor.
Someone got a phone call
that Mr. Alex had gotten shot.
And me and Miley
just looked at each other.
It didn't seem real at the time.
You get the text, "Alex Murdaugh
shot, side of the road, Hampton County."
And you're like, "What the No."
A mystery in South Carolina
gets even deeper.
Officials telling Fox News
53-year-old attorney Alex Murdaugh
was shot and wounded today
in Hampton County, South Carolina.
No word on his condition.
Alex was airlifted
to the hospital.
He'd been shot in the head
in broad daylight
while he was changing a tire
on the side of the road.
We reported Alex Murdaugh
was airlifted to hospital in Savannah.
"No, no, no, no."
"No, he was flown to Charleston,
not Savannah."
"FITSNews is wrong. They don't know
what they're talking about."
The guy was in Savannah.
His lawyers lied
to the reporters
to keep them from goin' there.
It's like,
"Are they deliberately confusing us?"
And then the 911 calls come out.
Hampton County 911.
What is your emergency?
I stopped.
I got a flat tire, and I stopped,
and somebody stopped to help me.
And they tried to shoot me.
Were you shot?
Yes.
But, I mean, I'm okay.
I can't drive.
Okay.
And I'm bleedin' a lot.
Where?
What part of your body?
I'm not sure. Somewhere on my head.
What's your name?
Alex Murdaugh.
Alex Murdaugh?
Yes, ma'am.
Oh, okay.
It took a couple of days
for the story to completely unravel.
Alex did not feel like he could go forward
and continue down that path. Um
And he felt like ending his life.
Alex acknowledged wrongdoing.
"It was an attempted suicide on my part."
He figures his last play is to make sure
that his surviving son, Buster, is okay.
If he was going to end his life,
he wanted it to benefit his son.
So he has the idea to hire someone, who
he knows, to, um, shoot him in the head.
Yes, we're on
Salkehatchie Road.
There is a man on the side of the road
with blood all over him.
And he's wavin' his hands.
He's just layin' there
wavin' his hands around?
He looks fine,
but it kind of looks like a setup.
So we didn't stop.
I don't blame you.
So all that was kinda strange.
And then, a few days into it,
people raised significant questions
about the version
that was coming from Alex's lawyers.
Joining us now,
exclusively, is Alex Murdaugh's attorney.
He went to his drug dealer
and asked him to shoot him,
and within 30 minutes,
his drug dealer had shot him in the head.
The murder of, um, his son and wife,
uh, 90 days ago
uh, took a tremendous toll on him.
Most people couldn't get through that.
He got through it with the use of opioids.
Within a couple weeks,
Alex Murdaugh went to rehab
for his secret opioid addiction.
And almost immediately,
police ultimately start looking
into a former client of Alex's.
Curtis Edward Smith.
Curtis Smith is the man
accused of shooting Alex Murdaugh.
He appeared in front of a judge
in Hampton County as well.
Authorities say he's facing charges
for assisted suicide,
insurance fraud, and more.
Curtis Edward Smith
subsequently said,
"I felt like I was bein' set up."
"He called me out there
to help him, I thought,
and then kind of, you know,
staged this struggle with a gun."
But he said he absolutely
did not conspire with Alex to kill him.
Does your client maintain
utter and complete innocence in this case?
- Go ahead.
- If I'd have shot him, he'd be dead.
He's alive.
These reports that your client stole
millions of dollars from the law firm.
Did he use all of that money to buy drugs,
or did he use some of the millions
for other things?
The vast majority of it,
as I understand it, was used to buy drugs.
That's a lot of Oxy.
Right, so who is Eddie Smith?
Who is this cousin, Eddie?
Well, we started doin'
some diggin' on him,
and what we found
was over 160,000 in incremental checks,
most of them under ten grand,
from October 2020 to May of 2021.
I did the math on the OxyContin.
You know how much OxyContin
that man could've bought?
114 years' worth.
And that's if he's a hard-core addict.
He's not buying OxyContin with that.
Maybe a little of it, but not all of it.
Where'd it go? Where is that money?
But the key takeaway is not necessarily
where it is, but when it happened.
He's not only depositing a check
days before the double homicide,
but Curtis Eddie Smith's
getting checks directly afterward.
Some of them totally more than $24,000.
I'm told by sources
the more credible theory, in theory,
is that he was setting Eddie up, right?
So he wasn't gonna ask Eddie to shoot him.
He was gonna come, you know,
make it look like
Eddie came out there to shoot him,
and then he had to shoot Eddie
in his self-defense.
I think it was
The whole thing is hinky from the word go.
And to make
then Eddie the suspect in the murder?
Mm-hm. And not just his
Not just his attempted murder,
but somehow culpable
in the murders of Maggie and Paul.
SLED says they're looking
at these allegations
that Murdaugh misappropriated funds
at the former law firm
that his family founded.
As we were standing here
moments ago,
five vehicles,
appeared to be law enforcement,
pulled out of one of the entrances
to the Moselle property
here in Colleton County.
We don't know what's going on.
We're gonna work to figure that out.
We do wanna say
five law-enforcement vehicles
just left this property here.
SLED announced
that they were opening an investigation
into Alex Murdaugh,
to his financial crimes.
That same day is the day that I got a tip
that they were executing
a search warrant at Moselle.
So I figured it was worth
driving out there,
putting my drone up
and seeing what I could get.
And as I was pulling up,
there were some official-looking trucks
pulling out of the driveway
and heading out.
So I thought I really missed everything.
It wasn't until a few days later,
when I was really
going through the footage
and seeing what I got,
that I noticed the guns.
My first thought was,
"This is a big deal."
I got the tip
that they were executing a search warrant,
and now I have footage of them
unloading eight guns out of the house.
It clearly captured John Marvin carrying
two uncased rifles out to the truck.
They loaded up a few more things,
drove over to the kennels,
loaded up a hunting dog
and a couple more things, and then left.
John Marvin and Buster,
it could be them going on a hunting trip.
I'm not sure, you know.
Knowing that a double homicide
had recently occurred on that property,
and there were Murdaughs taking guns
off of the property, not the officials,
it can obviously lead someone to speculate
maybe one of these firearms
or some of these firearms
were pieces of evidence
that could be used against
the Murdaugh family in some capacity.
If SLED had the murder weapons,
we would know by now.
Guns are missin'.
They're still lookin' for 'em.
In the aftermath of the roadside shooting,
everyone realized he's lied,
been caught lyin'.
I think that was the moment
people finally began to question
whether Alex Murdaugh had something to do
with the murders of his wife and son.
Or at the very least,
that he wasn't telling the truth
about what happened to them.
He's lyin' about somethin'.
I began to have a bad taste in my mouth
toward members of the Murdaugh family,
like a lot of people in the community.
And our coroner, Angela Topper,
she goes back lookin' through
Hampton County coroner records,
and she stood up and pointed out
there was something fishy about 2018,
Gloria Satterfield,
another case that went under the radar.
She's seeing that this death
was ruled natural,
even though it was a trip and fall.
She's seein'
that there was no autopsy ever done.
So she wrote a letter to SLED
and asked SLED
to help her investigate this.
At the same time,
SLED has got reason
to investigate Alex's financial crimes.
Eventually, the Satterfield family
were readin' articles
all over the state of South Carolina
about how there was a death settlement.
Her sons didn't know anything
about a settlement.
They're lookin' at each other and said,
"I didn't get any money, did you?"
Whenever that came out
and it was in the paper,
and Eric called me
and he said, "Something isn't right."
It was like, "Holy cow."
'Cause the boys,
they haven't seen anything.
Nothin'. Not one red cent.
There appeared to be a lawsuit.
Money was recovered,
and none of it was paid to the clients,
which seemed to be an impossibility.
So we said,
"We will talk to the Murdaughs."
And we were expecting
we were gonna get this response
where they would say, "Oh, absolutely.
There's just a misunderstanding."
"The money's in a bank account."
Or, "It was put in a trust."
And we got silence.
And so the next thing we did
was we filed a lawsuit immediately
because we needed subpoena power
to be able to get
documents and information.
And we learned that Alex Murdaugh
was not practicing law.
Alex Murdaugh
was practicing stealin' money.
At the end of the day,
Alex recovered $4.3 million.
Our clients got none of that money.
Zero.
It's just puttin' the knife in us
and cuttin' it deep.
It perturbs me.
I get really PO'ed
knowing that's what's happened now.
He used her name. My sister.
His law firm suspected him.
We confirmed it.
This was not his first time
that he was gonna misappropriate money
from other clients of the Murdaugh firm.
We have evidence
that he did it many times predating this.
You don't lose your virginity
at $4.3 million.
Alex Murdaugh has misappropriated
millions and millions of dollars,
and it's a fraud that began in 2015,
and was the vehicle
to steal the Satterfield's money in 2019.
Ronnie and I met with SLED.
We contacted the FBI.
And so were we the genesis
for these criminal charges
to be brought against Alex Murdaugh?
Absolutely.
We have breaking news
into our newsroom.
The South Carolina
Law Enforcement Division
have taken Alex Murdaugh into custody.
This is Murdaugh's new mug shot.
These charges stem
from a SLED investigation
into misappropriated settlement funds
in the death of Gloria Satterfield.
Authorities accusing him
of stealing millions in insurance money,
which was meant to go
to the sons of Gloria Satterfield,
his family's longtime housekeeper,
who died after a purported
trip-and-fall incident at the Murdaughs'
South Carolina home in 2018.
So in October of 2021,
Murdaugh appears before South Carolina
circuit court judge Clifton Newman.
I am going for a denial of bond
at this time.
No one No one in that courtroom
expected him to deny Alex Murdaugh's bond.
No one saw this comin'.
That was the point Alex Murdaugh realized,
"Wait a minute,
this system that's been enabling me"
Suddenly they can't count on it anymore.
Alex Murdaugh is in a jail cell.
No secrets are safe now.
Alex pleaded the Fifth,
refusing to answer accusations
that he embezzled
potentially millions of dollars
from his family's lucrative law firm
and his clients.
In October, the Court heard evidence
that Buster was gambling in Las Vegas
and selling off assets to the tune
of hundreds of thousands of dollars
for his father.
There have been some pictures
entered into evidence
of John Marvin and Buster
at the casino out in Las Vegas,
right at the same time that Alex Murdaugh
is in the county jail.
Did you get to gamble any?
Yeah.
Yeah, so I did go gambling, and then,
the next day, there was an article created
about how I'm misusing funds.
By gamblin'?
Yeah. Someone took a picture
of me and John Marvin in the casino.
You're kiddin' me.
Uh-uh.
What a fuckin' Are you kiddin' me?
No.
How'd they recognize you?
Apparently,
I'm a national figure, I think.
Listening to the jailhouse calls
has been fascinating, just to hear Alex.
Sometimes, you know,
you're aware that you're being taped.
But then, after a certain point,
I think you start to fall
into a natural pattern of conversation
and talk about your Super Bowl winnings
of, you know, meat sticks in the canteen.
Hey, I hit nine out of 11 games on
Sunday. Nine out of 11,
that's pretty damn hard.
Yeah.
I won, like, six soups,
four beef sticks
Well, that's good.
Your party has answered.
- With a prepaid collect call from
- Alex.
All phone calls are subject
to monitoring and recording.
- Hello?
- Hey, bud.
Jim and them told me they, the grand jury,
indicted a bunch more things
on the last Friday.
But you know that's just overkill, right?
Yeah, I mean
I mean, they're just trying
to pile it on me now, you know that.
Yeah, I'm aware.
But I can take it.
Stephen Smith and Gloria
and all that bullshit.
Are they still tryin' to say out there,
there are some mysteries
surrounding Gloria's death?
About how she died?
Sayin' what now?
About how she died. Are they still
tryin' to make some innuendo there?
I don't know. I, um
They still sayin' anything
about Stephen Smith?
- I don't think
- They still connecting to us?
Yeah, I don't think anybody
took to heart any of that.
SLED say there's no connection?
No.
SLED has not released anything.
They wouldn't even They didn't even
release a statement about
What was this most recent thing? Um
Something came out not long ago,
talkin' about how there's been, like,
a breakthrough in evidence
to do with, like,
the homicides.
We're comin' up to a year
since this crime took place,
and we're just now
startin' to hear about forensic evidence
that links Alex Murdaugh
directly to the scene of this crime.
Will Folks. How are you, sir?
The coroner says that Paul
and Maggie were killed at around 9:00 p.m.
According to Alex Murdaugh,
he was not at Moselle until 10:07 p.m.
and finds his wife and son murdered.
According to our sources,
high-velocity impact spatter,
some kind of fluid
on Alex Murdaugh's clothes,
places him at Moselle
when the murders occur.
It's not necessarily what it is,
it's where it puts him
at the moment Maggie and Paul were killed.
There's no other place he could've been
than with at least one of these victims
at the moment they died.
So the next thing we got was the video
from Paul Murdaugh's cell phone
at 8:44 p.m.
Now the video on Paul's phone,
you can't see Alex on it,
but you can hear him talking,
and the time stamp
is right before the murders took place.
A second piece of evidence
that conclusively places Alex Murdaugh
at the scene of the murders
at or around the time they happen.
And this breaks this thing wide open
as it relates to Alex's
potential involvement.
Because for the first time,
we know he was there when it happened.
Maybe he didn't kill his wife and son.
We don't know that for sure.
But we know he was there when they died.
We know he knows something
about what happened to them.
High-velocity spatter
is associated with the use
of a high-velocity weapon,
like a rifle,
especially used at close range.
FITSNews also first reported
that Paul Murdaugh's phone
was found on his body at the scene.
And we've confirmed with that same source
that on that phone there is video
which contains audio of Alex Murdaugh
talking with his wife, Maggie,
close to the time of the murders.
Alex Murdaugh is not seen on the video,
but he is heard speaking with her.
And that recording has a time stamp,
which could be key to the investigation.
One of my editors suggested,
go ahead and write a breakin'- news thing
in case Alex Murdaugh
is charged with homicide.
And I can't bring myself to do it.
That's an awful thing
to even wrap your head around,
that a man could kill his wife and child,
and if it's true,
this is the fall of a dynasty.
This is a fall from grace.
Alex Murdaugh is used
to walking into court as a lawyer,
but this week,
he's not only been disbarred,
now he's facing two counts of murder
in the deaths of his wife and his son.
Now Murdaugh's legal team
immediately responded to this
this afternoon,
with a statement saying, in part,
"Alex did not have any motive whatsoever
to murder them."
"We are immediately
filing a motion for a speedy trial."
We are here today
on the case
of the State versus Richard Alex Murdaugh.
He has been indicted
by the Colleton County grand jury
for 2022 G.S. 15-592.
That charge is for the murder
of Maggie Murdaugh.
2022 G.S. 15-593,
that is for the murder of Paul Murdaugh.
Uh, Richard Alex Murdaugh.
If that is your name,
please raise your right hand.
Do you waive reading of the indictments?
Yes, sir.
What say you, Richard Alex Murdaugh?
Are you guilty or not guilty
of the felonies
wherein you stand indicted?
Not guilty.
- How shall you be tried?
- By God and my country.
Thank you.
Bond will therefore be denied.
Right, thank you all.
I think Mr. Alex,
facing all this heat from the media,
from the court
He's about to be exposed from all angles
of cheating and lying and stealing.
I do believe that Alex Murdaugh
would kill Paul and Maggie.
I don't care who you are,
what you've done, no one deserves that.
Everything
that Mr. Alex's going through right now.
If all of that's actually true,
then, you know,
you kinda You kinda get what you ask for.
Everybody's sufferin' for those mistakes,
and some mistakes are a lot bigger
than others and that you can't take back.
I lost a really, really big piece,
uh, of my heart.
You know, I was lost.
Started partyin' again,
you know, like I was a teenager.
You know, I
You know, I acted stupid for a while.
I tried to run away from everything.
I don't know, I just think
everybody's kinda got the wrong idea
about what's goin' on.
I've heard all kinds of stuff. I've heard
people say that Paul deserved to die.
He made a mistake, and, yeah,
there's a lot of people sufferin' for it,
but nobody deserves to die.
After the boating accident
and Paul and Maggie's murders,
everyone as a community was very shook.
I've hit a lot of low points.
You're tryin' to cope,
but you're also tryin'
to be a regular 20-year-old.
To be able to sit here today
and to tell my story
without having to be scared anymore,
and going through
all the suppressed emotions
and the stuff that I try to forget,
I think that's strength.
Our relationship's changed drastically
after four years.
It was hard for me
to start hangin' out with Miley again
after we lost Mallory,
just because I felt guilty in a way.
Miley and Mallory,
they were best friends too,
and I didn't want it to feel like
anyone was replacing anyone
in each other's lives.
We're one of the only ones
that understand what we're goin' through.
I mean, I think about her every day,
and it's hard to move on without her,
but a good way to honor her
is keepin' her name alive.
What justice looks like
for me now
is getting the answers that we need.
I wanna know what happened to Gloria.
South Carolina authorities
say they received permission
from a Satterfield estate lawyer
to exhume the body of Gloria Satterfield
and further investigate
the circumstances of her death.
I wanna know who killed Paul and Maggie,
and who killed Stephen.
I still think that Mr. Alex
is hiding things,
and if you ever meet him,
I'm sure you'd get that feeling too.
Your party has answered.
All phone calls are subject
to monitoring and recording.
- Hey.
- Hey.
What you doin'?
Nothin'. What's up?
Hey, Bus, I meant to ask you,
did Netflix put somethin' out
about all this?