I’d been within the case for the reason that murders of Paul and Maggie Murdaugh, however it was this inexplicable roadside incident which turned me right into a full-on Reddit-scraping, podcast-devouring follower. Years in the past, I wrote a novel wherein the protagonist units up an analogous suicide-disguised-as-murder scheme for an insurance coverage payout. I’d nervous on the time that this flip was a stretch, and it had nagged at me ever since. However right here was real-life vindication of my plotting, with the added twist that even the underlying suicide story seemed to be a fiction. The narrative gave the impression to be coming into the realm of deepest noir, full with serial fake-outs, intimations of corruption, and a real psychological puzzle at its middle. Who was this jolly-looking, ruddy-cheeked lawyer, smiling like Santa in a single household {photograph} after one other, his arms draped lovingly round his spouse and sons?
I flew to Charleston and drove throughout the coastal plain to Hampton, the Murdaugh seat for a century. The terrain there may be the gray-green of Corot landscapes, however flatter and drabber, with Greenback Common shops and El Cheapo gasoline stations as a substitute of viaducts and windmills. Hampton has seen higher days, and a former Westinghouse plant stands as a poignant monument. The laminates it as soon as manufactured had been near indestructible (they had been used for bowling-alley flooring), however the plant itself is in ruins.
“Simply want a minute to ship a fast e-mail after which three hours to surprise if the tone was acceptable.”
Cartoon by Benjamin Schwartz
The one different buildings of any scale on the town are the crimson brick edifices of the First Baptist Church, the legislation workplace the place Alex used to work, and the county courthouse. A courthouse guard confirmed me the trial room, stating ancestral portraits of Murdaughs staring down on the jury field. I requested him what he considered Alex. “Actual good gentleman,” he stated, however declined to talk additional. Close by, a county worker defined to me that some locals had been too afraid of Alex to speak brazenly.
By now, Alex’s legal professionals had confirmed that their shopper was certainly an individual of curiosity within the killing of his spouse and son. No motive for an act of such inconceivable horror had been provided. Individuals reported that Maggie had consulted a divorce lawyer weeks earlier than the capturing, however that hardly amounted to an evidence for the slaughter. (Harpootlian has stated that there isn’t any proof for the declare.) On-line boards had been filled with theories, however they appeared derived extra from Norse fable than from human psychology: a typical conjecture proposed that Paul had murdered his mom throughout an argument, then was killed by his enraged father. (Alex’s attorneys declined to reply to questions on most of the allegations. He has typically denied wrongdoing and has disputed info about his case within the media and in court docket.)
I used to be attempting to keep away from what Faulkner known as the outsider’s “eagerness to imagine something in regards to the South not even offered or not it’s derogatory however merely weird sufficient.” Particularly, I wished to withstand any concept of the continuing saga as a story of some purely gothic malevolence. Jack Fanning, a former environmental guide from Charleston, steered that an understanding of the native panorama would possibly provide some insights—if not into the occasions themselves, then at the least into the Murdaugh household and its peculiar place within the Lowcountry.
Fanning and I met in Hampton and drove towards the Combahee River, crisscrossing swamps the place he had typically fished and camped. Logging vans plied the slender blacktop. The scrawny logs strapped on the flatbeds, Fanning informed me, had been loblolly pines that had been grown for pulp—“a nasty business.” He laid out a stark historical past of the area. Rice plantations, depending on slave labor, had given solution to cotton, corn, and soy—crops that depleted the soil. The land, additional leached of vitamins by chemical fertilizers, was ultimately too poor for a lot apart from the loblolly pines, clusters of which stood on the flat scrub, awaiting the chainsaw. With the lack of agricultural jobs, native lawmakers struggled to draw different industries. Medical-waste disposal, tire grinding, and different grim occupations joined the logging and pulping trades.
Private-injury legal professionals additionally flourished, with one agency specifically making the most of the development: pmped. It had perfected a litigation technique that took benefit of an uncommon state provision permitting residents who had suffered an harm to sue in no matter county they selected, so long as the corporate had a presence there. The harm may have occurred wherever in South Carolina. The availability was rescinded in 2005, however by then Hampton County had grow to be a mecca for plaintiffs, with obliging juries regularly awarding multimillion-dollar verdicts in fits introduced by pmped. (A 2002 article in Forbes cited a medical-malpractice case that ended with a fourteen-million-dollar payout—13 occasions the nationwide common for comparable instances.) Large firms started avoiding the realm. Walmart developed plans to open a retailer in Hampton, however after discussions with a lawyer the concept was deserted, based on Forbes. Firms that couldn’t go away—corresponding to CSX Transportation, whose railway tracks run via Hampton—typically discovered it extra handy to settle when pmped filed a go well with towards them. Higher that than face a Murdaugh-friendly jury.
As this racket was defined to me, I used to be reminded of the Hitchcock adaptation of du Maurier’s “Jamaica Inn,” wherein a rapacious squire and his gang plunder any vessel unwise sufficient to enter their distant Cornish cove. Seclusion actually appears to have been a key component within the Murdaugh story. Invoice Nettles, the U.S. Legal professional in South Carolina beneath President Barack Obama, informed me, “It’s essential to know how remoted that a part of the world is. It’s insanely poor. And there’s no business, other than suing individuals.”
Extra jolting swerves adopted the homicide of Paul and Maggie, because the South Carolina Regulation Enforcement Division introduced that it was inspecting two extra fatalities probably related to the Murdaughs. The primary, from 2015, concerned a younger nursing pupil, Stephen Smith, who had been discovered lifeless in the midst of a street close to Hampton, with a critical head harm. Superficial appearances steered that he’d run out of gasoline, begun strolling residence, and been unintentionally hit by a automobile. However not one of the traditional proof of a hit-and-run had been discovered. “I noticed no automobile particles, skid marks, or accidents per somebody being struck by a automobile,” a highway-patrol officer on the scene reported. Days after the killing, Smith’s mom informed the police she’d heard that Paul and Buster Murdaugh had been behind it. Officers investigated the tip, and the potential for a hate crime emerged: Smith was homosexual, and his title was linked with Buster’s within the gossip mill of former high-school classmates. (Buster couldn’t be reached for remark.) However earlier than the officers may monitor the rumor to its supply, the pathologist within the case described Smith’s demise as the results of being struck by a motorcar—contradicting the opinions of the county coroner and at the least one highway-patrol investigator. No Murdaughs had been ever questioned.
The second fatality concerned Gloria Satterfield, the Murdaughs’ housekeeper for 24 years. In 2018, she died after apparently tripping on the steps exterior the home at Moselle. In 2022, investigators obtained permission to exhume her physique. Authorities have but to disclose any proof of foul play within the deaths of Smith or Satterfield. However a long-concealed insurance coverage matter arising from Satterfield’s demise offered the general public with a serious revelation: Alex’s alleged monetary crimes had prolonged far past misappropriating workplace funds. Furthermore, it appeared that some vital members of the Lowcountry’s enterprise and authorized group had facilitated his deceptions for years.
Satterfield’s connection to the broader story was found accidentally. In October, 2019, a neighborhood reporter named Mandy Matney revealed that, whereas sifting via court docket paperwork in regards to the Murdaughs, she’d stumbled throughout a wrongful-death settlement associated to the housekeeper’s demise. Greater than half 1,000,000 {dollars} had evidently been awarded to her two sons, Tony and Brian. Tony learn Matney’s article and was shocked: neither he nor Brian had been informed of the settlement. All they knew was that after their mom’s demise, the earlier yr, Alex had approached the household with a generous-seeming proposition: he would assist them sue him over their mom’s demise, to be able to accumulate a big sum from his insurance coverage. (He had a house owner’s coverage with Lloyd’s.) To that finish, he’d really helpful a lawyer named Cory Fleming. He didn’t inform them that Fleming was his shut good friend.
Eric Bland, a malpractice lawyer whom the Satterfield brothers employed after studying of the settlement, talked me via the cold-blooded scheme behind the scheme. Within the fall of 2018, Cory Fleming discovered that Lloyd’s would pay out in full on Alex’s coverage. The legislation required Fleming to tell the non-public consultant of the Satterfield property in regards to the settlement. On the time, the non-public consultant was Tony. However, for the plot to work, Tony had to get replaced by somebody in Alex’s pocket. Alex and Cory Fleming informed him that the case was getting sophisticated, and that he ought to let an expert banker grow to be the consultant. Evidently, they’d a reputation to recommend.
For years, pmped had been doing enterprise with the Hampton-based Palmetto State Financial institution. The financial institution’s chief working officer on the time, Russell Laffitte, had accommodated—and profited from—quite a few uncommon monetary dealings by Alex. In earlier transactions, Laffitte had performed the a part of the non-public consultant. However on this occasion it was a vice-president, Chad Westendorf, who signed on. Westendorf had no expertise within the position, however that was high-quality: his job was to know nothing and to say nothing to the Satterfield brothers about any cash coming their method. (Attorneys for Laffitte and for Fleming declined to remark.)
Regulation corporations typically associate with exterior organizations to craft structured settlement plans for his or her purchasers, to be able to assure long-term revenue and to attenuate taxes. pmped had often labored with a good Atlanta-based insurance coverage firm known as Forge Consulting. However Alex created a shadow model of the corporate, opening at the least two “doing enterprise as” accounts at Financial institution of America beneath the title—watch for it—Forge.
When the Lloyd’s test arrived, Fleming deducted charges for himself and for Westendorf, then despatched the remaining $403,500 to considered one of Alex’s Forge accounts, apparently assured that, within the occasion of an investigation, he may declare that he thought he was sending the cash to Forge Consulting. In all chance, neither he nor Alex ever believed that their actions could be challenged. It took the deus-ex-machina occasion of a drunken boat crash for Alex’s funds to return beneath the scrutiny of native reporters.
Bland, the Satterfield brothers’ lawyer, started urgent authorities to open a felony investigation into the settlement. Whereas doing so, he discovered that the brothers had been cheated of much more cash: Alex had one other legal responsibility coverage, with the Nautilus Insurance coverage Firm, which had additionally paid out. This settlement was for $3.8 million.
