Disgraced South Carolina legal professional Alex Murdaugh was charged with murdering his spouse and son.
AP
The lawyer for for the household of Gloria Satterfield — the lifeless housekeeper in South Carolina whose heirs efficiently sued her boss, accused assassin Alex Murdaugh — stated Friday that Murdaugh is in a lot hassle that he could be be higher off lifeless himself.
“I'd by no means advocate anybody committing suicide however in Alex’s case he has ruined so many individuals’s lives already and there’s a lot extra coming,” Eric Bland, the Columbia, SC legal professional representing the Satterfield household, informed The Submit.
“This man has left so many victims in his wake, relations whose lives he’s both destroyed and relations he might have killed, that that’s exhausting to overestimate the harm. This might all drag on one other seven years. Alex is probably a man who will go down in historical past making the identify ‘Murdaugh’ synonymous with Madoff, Manson and Ted Bundy.”
Murdaugh, 54 — a fourth-generation lawyer from a highly effective authorized household — was indicted Thursday on two counts of homicide and two counts of weapons possession within the brutal, execution-style taking pictures deaths of Maggie Murdaugh, 52, and Paul Murdaugh, 22.
His spouse and son have been gunned down close to a canine kennel on the household’s 1,700-acre searching property in Islandton, SC, with at the very least two separate weapons — a rifle and a shotgun — on June 7, 2021.
The disgraced legal professional was tied to the killings by way of blood spatter on his clothes together with a video that put him on the homicide scene, in accordance with stories
The elder Murdaugh referred to as 911 and frantically informed a dispatcher he had returned dwelling to seek out the bullet-riddled our bodies of his spouse and son.
He’s been in jail, held on a $7 million bond, since October in Richland County on exponentially growing costs of economic fraud, starting with allegations that he stole insurance coverage cash from Satterfield’s two sons. He’s since been hit with at the very least 85 costs involving $8.4 million for fraudulent insurance coverage settlements, together with cash allegedly stolen from a younger paraplegic man, and already confronted a attainable 500 years in jail.
Bland stated that, in need of suicide, the one honorable possibility for Murdaugh now could be to come back clear on all the things he is aware of about each the murders of Maggie and Paul in addition to the slew of economic costs in opposition to him.
“The one foreign money he has is data,” Bland stated. “There’s no manner he did this on their own. He may determine, ‘I’m going to dealer the data I've to get all this within the open and at last do some good.’ However he’s such a narcissist — is he going to consider what that is going to do to his son and brothers and cousins?”
Bland informed The Submit that Curtis “Cousin Eddie” Smith, the Walterboro, SC, man arrested in September 2021 for allegedly taking pictures Murdaugh on a rural Hampton Highway in a botched and convoluted insurance coverage fraud/suicide-for-hire rip-off and who was arrested a second time final month on drug and cash laundering costs, has given police the names of individuals Alex Murdaugh offered medicine to.
Bland stated Smith allegedly procured medicine for Murdaugh, some or all of which he offered to others. When the orders obtained greater, Bland stated, Smith requested Murdaugh why and Murdaugh named names — of individuals near him.
“Usually you’d make up names in the event that they have been individuals near you who you really liked,” stated Bland. “However Alex simply informed Eddie the names.”
Murdaugh’s legal professional Dick Harpootlian, who is predicated in Columbia, SC, requested prosecutors for a speedy trial after the homicide costs have been leveled final week.
He and Murdaugh’s different lawyer, Jim Griffin, issued an announcement final week that learn partially:
“Alex desires his household, pals and everybody to know that he didn't have something to do with the murders of Maggie and Paul. He beloved them greater than something on the earth. It was very clear from day one which regulation enforcement and the Legal professional Basic prematurely concluded that Alex was liable for the homicide of his spouse and son. However we all know that Alex didn't have any motive by any means to homicide them.”
When reached Friday by The Submit, Harpootlian declined additional remark.
“I’ll do my speaking within the courtroom,” he stated.
However some insiders say that Harpootlian may effectively get his shopper off as a result of forensic discrepancies and the puzzling indisputable fact that two completely different weapons — a shotgun and a rifle — have been used within the murders of Maggie and Paul.
“Harpootlian is doing cartwheels proper now,” a supply near the investigation informed The Submit Friday. “That trial might be brief and candy. Dick H. is their man. He’s going to dazzle that jury. All he wants is one particular person to not associate with a responsible verdict and so they’ll discover them. Everybody down there nonetheless loves the Murdaughs and owes them. No manner will he get convicted. This trial might be within the rear view mirror very quick.”
Mentioned Bland, “I used to be in courtroom immediately with Dick and I used to be telling him this was a no-winner for him, representing this pariah. However he sees it in a different way. He’s not going for a not responsible verdict. He is aware of he’ll by no means get 12 individuals to say not responsible. What he tells juries is that ‘not responsible’ doesn't imply ‘harmless.’ It means the state has not met their burden of proof.”
Residents of rural Hampton and Colleton counties, over which 4 generations of Murdaughs dominated from each their regulation agency and the native prosecutor’s workplace, are feeling extra resentful than relieved after information got here final week of the homicide indictment.
“Everybody’s gone loopy with this within the exterior world,” a Hampton resident whose household has lived within the space for generations and knew the Murdaughs effectively informed The Submit Friday. “They’re saying the Murdaughs had some type of genetic defect and so they’re tarring us all with that very same brush. Simply maintain on. Folks obtained to decelerate. We’re a group of 20,000 individuals. We’re not Alec. We’re the identical we all the time have been.”
The person added that, regardless of the media onslaught, the city and surrounding space has endured for the reason that murders.
“We’re nonetheless going to have the Friday evening soccer video games within the fall and our dove hunts and our barbecues and our large household gatherings. That’s who we're. Nothing’s going to vary that.”
Sandy Smith, the mom of a younger homosexual South Carolina man — whose mysterious 2015 demise was re-opened by SLED the day after The Submit ran a narrative about it in mid-June 2021— stated Friday that she was “extremely relieved” when she heard Thursday that Alex Murdaugh has been formally charged with homicide. She hopes it should pave the best way for Stephen’s homicide to be solved.
“It was a superb day in South Carolina and a superb week for Stephen,” Smith stated. She stated that a gravestone for her son might be unveiled Sunday at Gooding Cemetery in Hampton County and lots of are anticipated to attend the occasion.
Cash for the gravestone was raised following the tales about Stephen’s homicide and the hashtag #StandingforStephen that went viral on social media. No Murdaugh has been formally linked to the demise of Stephen, whose lifeless physique was discovered dumped on a rural street, however there have been whispers of the household’s involvement for years.
“We felt like this was Stephen’s week,” Smith stated. “We’re optimistic for the longer term.”
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