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Killer in the family podcast
A true crime podcast exploring men who kill their families.
Killer in the family podcast
Episode 34 - The Murdaugh Family Part Two
In June 2021, just three years ago, Maggie Murdaugh and her son Paul were shot and killed at the Murdaugh family property in South Carolina. Husband and father Alex Murdaugh is currently serving two life sentences for their murder. Their deaths were the last in a long line of murders associated with the Murdaugh family. At the time of his death Paul was facing investigation for the death of fellow teenager Mallory Beach in a boating accident and the deaths of housekeeper Gloria Satterfield and teenager Stephen Smith were also closely associated with the family – five deaths in six years.
This is the Part Two of the story of Maggie and Paul Murdaugh, Mallory Beach, Stephen Smith and Gloria Satterfield.
Information and support
· Samaritans UK Contact Us | Samaritans
· National Domestic Violence Helpline UK 0808 2000 247
· Women’s Aid www.womensaid.org.uk
· Mental health support USA I'm looking for mental health help for myself | Mental Health America (mhanational.org)
· Domestic abuse helpline USA 1.800.799.SAFE Domestic Violence Support | National Domestic Violence Hotline (thehotline.org)
References
Clare Laxton is fundraising for Women's Aid Federation Of England (justgiving.com)
Watch Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal | Netflix Official Site
Alex Murdaugh: Key evidence that brought him down - BBC News
Cold Case Western AustraliaListen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify
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Hi there and welcome to Killer in the Family podcast. I'm your host, claire Luxton. So before we delve into this episode, just a reminder that I'm putting my money or my running where my mouth is and have signed up to run the Royal Parks Half Marathon in October to raise money for Women's Aid. Now you know how passionate I am about Women's Aid and the work they do. I'm actually wearing one of their awesome sweatshirts as I'm recording this. I'll add my fundraising link to my socials and it's in the episode notes, and anything you can give is always gratefully received, and if you aren't able to give anything, then please do share the link around. Thank you also to everyone for your messages that you've sent through the link in the episode notes and do also keep story suggestions coming in. Get in touch with me on Insta at KillerInTheFamilyPod, or send me a text through the episode notes and I'll add them to the list. So let's get into this episode.
Speaker 1:In June 2021, just three years ago, maggie Murdoch and her son, paul were shot and killed at the Murdoch family property in South Carolina. Husband and father, alec Murdoch, is currently serving two life sentences for their murder. Their deaths were the last in a long line of murders associated with the Murdoch family. At the time of his death, paul was facing criminal investigation for the death of fellow teenager Mallory Beach in a boating accident and the deaths of housekeeper Gloria Satterfield and teenager Stephen Smith, also closely associated with the family. Five deaths in six years. This is about what happens when a man goes further than killing his whole family. About what happens when a man goes further than killing his whole family. This is part two of the story of Maggie and Paul Murdoch, mallory Beach, stephen Smith and Gloria Satterfield.
Speaker 1:this is going to be a tough listen to you as we said in last week's episode, this story it reaches so many echelons of so many lives and communities that it is quite difficult to sort of tell, untangle and really like bring out those main points. It is also one of the most told stories over the past few years. I'm sure you will have heard about it already and for this episode, as I said last week, I relied on a few main sources. First is a book by the brilliant Mandy Matney, blood on their Hands, which is a great account of the whole story, and Mandy herself has been a huge advocate for all the victims in this episode. Mandy also has a podcast called the Murder on Murders. It's changed its name to True Sunlight as it's moved on to other stories and it's brilliant. I've also listened to the great Crime Analyst podcast episodes on this story. Laura Richards delves quite deep into this story through a series of episodes and they're a brilliant listen too. And finally there's a Netflix series about this story called Murdoch Murders that does a southern scandal and I definitely recommend a watch of all of those episodes. So I've linked to all the sources in the episode notes, as usual, and there's also information in the episode notes about support available if you need it. So we're picking this story up on the 7th of June 2021, where we left in part one just over three years ago, and just to flag, if you haven't listened to part one, then I definitely recommend going back to listen to that episode before catching up with this one. So up to this point, we learn all about the Murdoch family, their generations-long service in the law and as the elected solicitor in South Carolina and Hampton County, and the power that they assert over the local community. We know about the deaths of Mallory Beach, stephen Smith and Gloria Satterfield that have all been linked to the Murdoch family, and we know that in June 2021, poor Murdoch, the youngest son, was facing criminal charges for the death of Mallory.
Speaker 1:So on the night of the 7th of June 2021, 911 received a call from Alec Murdoch saying that his wife Maggie and son Paul had been shot and killed at their hunting lodge, moselle. Now, moselle was just one property that the Murdochs owned. Alec bought it in 2013 and, according to the Independent Online, it had 1700 acres of land, which included 5,000 square foot house farm, a two mile stretch of river, as well as some dog kennels. So the call on the night of the 7th of June was made around 20 past 10 in the evening and Alex said immediately that it was murder. And once the police and SLED arrived on scene, alec was already saying that it was about the boat wreck that Paul was in and that Paul had been receiving threats. So before anyone had done anything, alec was already creating reasons and excuses for the deaths of Maggie and Paul. Now, just to say her, sled stands for South Carolina Law Enforcement Division and they were the main investigators of the crime. So what Alec wasn't doing when the police arrived was looking for the shooter and being scared that there might still be a shooter on his property, maybe gunning for him and his other son Buster to on his property, maybe gunning for him and his other son Buster. He wasn't worried about that at all, which did seem strange seeing as he insisted that Maggie and Paul had been shot by someone with a vendetta against the family.
Speaker 1:So what the police found when they got to Moselle was that Maggie and Paul had been shot quite a way away from the main lodge. They were actually by the dog kennels where the family kept their hunting dogs, mainly Labradors. Now, as you know, I've got a massive soft spot for dogs and I have a Labrador myself, alan, who's next to me as I'm recording this. He's not for hunting purposes, obviously, but police found 52 year old Maggie Murdoch shot dead near the kennels, and her son, 22 year old Paul Murdoch, shot dead closer to the feeding shed of the kennels. Maggie and Paul had been shot with two different guns and it's thought that Paul was shot first and he was shot twice with a shotgun, once in the head and once in the chest, and Maggie was actually shot five times with a semi-automatic rifle, with some of the shots being fired when she'd already fallen down to the ground. Now no one knows exactly what happened near the kennels that night, but it has been suggested that Maggie might have been running towards Paul, who had been shot when she was killed. I just I can't imagine how scared she must have been in those few moments.
Speaker 1:Now we've talked a lot on this podcast about the impacts of coming into these murder scenes for first responders like police and ambulance, and apparently this scene was particularly violent, but I'm not going to go into all the details and I'm just going to leave it there Now. The coroner later estimated that Maggie and Paul were killed between 9pm and 9.30pm that night and Paul were killed between 9pm and 9.30pm that night. Alec Murdoch said that he found them both around 10pm and called the police around 20 past Now. Just a side note Laura Richards on the Crime Analyst podcast in the episodes on this does a brilliant breakdown of the 911 call and Alec's subsequent interviews with the SLED team. Now there's a particular telling moment on the 911 call and Alec's subsequent interviews with the SLED team. Now there's a particular telling moment on the 911 call when the dispatcher asks Alec about his address and whether it's a house or a trailer. So a trailer in the UK is like a static caravan, like a big caravan, and he was so offended by this suggestion that he lived in a trailer that his voice goes up a few octaves as he says it's a house. I definitely recommend listening to the crime analyst episodes on this and I've linked to them in the episode notes and the police body worn camera footage of Alec when they arrived on the scene shows him asking if they're definitely dead and doing what I think is some incredible fake crying, something he continued when he was later interviewed by SLED.
Speaker 1:What has come out about that night is that Maggie and Paul were at the kennels around 8.30 and, according to the Independent Online, at 8.44pm Paul's phone recorded that he called his friend Rogan Gibson about a dog that he was looking after for him, cash, and whether he had an issue with his tail. The dog, not Rogan. A few minutes later, at 8.49pm, paul's phone received a picture or received a text from Rogan saying, quote see if you can get a good picture of it, marion wants to send it to a girl. We know that's a vet. Get him to sit and stay, he shouldn't move around too much. So that text message that was sent at 8.49 to Paul's phone was never read and from then on neither Paul nor Maggie responded to calls or messages on their phones. Neither Paul nor Maggie responded to calls or messages on their phones and Rogan actually tried to call Paul several times. So 9.10pm, 9.29pm, 9.42pm, 9.57pm and 10.08pm and also text Maggie at 9.34pm saying, quote tell Paul to call me. He never received a reply or a call back. Now don't forget at this point it's thought that Maggie was living separately at the beach house rather than with Alec, though she was still over at Mazzal to be with her sons and the dogs very often. It's thought that she was putting some space between her and Alec maybe. On another side note, morgan Paul's former girlfriend, tells the Netflix documentary that Paul's grandmother once mooted divorce from her husband Randolph. Now, remember there are many Randolphs in this family and in retaliation, randolph wrote and published her obituary in a local newspaper. I mean bloody hell. If that's not a clear message to the women of this family, I do not know what is Now.
Speaker 1:The murders of Maggie and Paul Murdoch shocked the local community and brought down the Murdoch family dynasty in the most dramatic way. By september 2021, alec murdoch's world was slowly falling apart. His fall from grace would nearly be completed. Not only had Maggie and Paul been murdered three months before, which was still under investigation at this point, but Alec had been found to be misappropriating money from clients at his law firm and had actually been forced to resign from the firm on the 3rd of September. Now Alec would end up facing over 100 charges of financial fraud and misappropriation from his law clients. Now, I'm not going to go into detail about his financial crimes in this episode because I want to try and keep it as focused as possible on Maggie and Paul and the other people that have died that have been associated with the family, but I think you know, is really important to understand the scale and vastness of his financial crimes and I think they're still being investigated now. So that's separate sort of law process, but it's really important context to know what was happening for Alec at this point, and things here were about to get even more bizarre and complicated.
Speaker 1:So on the 4th of September 2021, police received a phone call from Alec where he said he'd been shot by the side of the road in Hampton County and, according to Alec, he was changing a tyre to his car because he had a flat tyre just by the side of the road and was shot by a passerby. People didn't know his condition and he was taken to hospital to get treated. And in the 911 call, alec said that he was changing his tyre. Someone stopped to help and then they taken to hospital to get treated and in the 911 call, alex said that he was changing his tyre. Someone stopped to help and then they tried to shoot him. He said he was bleeding pretty badly and he thinks he got shot in the head.
Speaker 1:Now, what no one knew at this time was that this seemingly random drive-by shooting was actually an alleged suicide slash murder attempt by Alec. He hired someone he knew Curtis Smith or Eddie to shoot him and then it turned out that this Curtis Smith was actually Alec's drug dealer. So we talked in the last episode that Alec had a pretty bad opioid addiction and this was about to blow up in the biggest way. Apparently, the deal with Smith was for him to murder Alec so that Buster, his other son, would get the insurance or inheritance money, would get the insurance or inheritance money and Smith was actually called in the community the fourth Murdoch, who basically cleared up anything that Alec needed to, including financial fraud and covering everything up for Alec. However, smith talked about how he didn't conspire to shoot Alec at all. So who knew what actually happened here? And one theory was that Alec was trying to set Smith up to get him into jail and make him a suspect in the murders of Maggie and Paul. I mean, this guy really goes all in when he's trying to cover something up and save his own skin, right?
Speaker 1:It's clear now that Alec was getting pretty desperate to cover his tracks and try and insure himself against the consequences for his actions, but actually none of this worked and when the news about Alec's financial fraud started to come out. He publicly talked about having an opioid addiction and that's what he was spending the money on In September 2021, later on that month, he went into rehab and seemed to blame a lot of his mistakes and decisions on this addiction, and remember that Gloria Satterfield, their housekeeper, had found a stash of his opioids back in 2018 before she died. Now I am not here to shame anyone for having an addiction. It is a disease that can destroy people's lives. I know that, and it seems here, though, that Alec is talking about his addiction when it's convenient for him, ie, to excuse his huge financial crimes and possibly murder.
Speaker 1:He said that he used all the money he defrauded to buy oxycodone, which is a painkiller and highly addictive, and on the Netflix documentary journalist Will Foulkes talked about how he added up all the fraudulent payments Murdoch made between October 2020 and May 2021 and said that he could have bought enough Oxy for hundreds of years with that money and that it can't have just been spent on drugs. So where was this money? And there's a similar Reddit thread about this as well, and I really tried not to get into a Reddit hole on this story, but it's quite hard about how it would actually be really difficult to spend all that money on Oxy, even as the most hardened user. They just couldn't. That's what they were saying. Later on that month, sled actually searched Moselle for evidence about financial crimes, and don't forget that the investigation into Maggie and Paul's murders were still ongoing at this point. Now in the Netflix documentary, they talked about how this was the point where the community really started questioning Alec no-transcript.
Speaker 1:In July 2022, a year after the murders, alec Murdoch was indicted on two counts of murder for the deaths of his wife and son. So Alex's trial began in January 2023 and lasted six weeks. You might remember some news coverage of it from last year. So he claimed he was not guilty. The trial took place in Colleton County Courthouse and was set to be the centre of attention for as long as it took.
Speaker 1:Now, the courtroom here pretty awkwardly had a portrait of Alex's grandfather, randolph, on the wall and for the trial the judge ordered for it to be removed. So throughout the trial there was a faded square on the wall where this portrait had been another indication of the fall from grace at his own hands. Before the trial and another like weird twist in this case, oj Simpson talked about the trial on social media and said it wouldn't surprise him if Alec beat the charges of murder. Right cheers, oj. Yeah, it's always great to get your brilliant legal input into this. I mean, I do not understand that. So Alec said that what actually happened that night on the 7th of June 2021 is that he, maggie and Paul sort of hung around the house together having dinner and stuff before Maggie and Paul went to the kennels. They usually either went in like a buddy's buggy, so like a quad bike, or walked. Alex said that he stayed at the house. He fell asleep for a bit and then around 9pm went to see his mum, who was about 13 miles away. He stayed with his mum and then he said he got home around 10pm, went to the kennels to see Maggie and Paul and that's when he found them dead.
Speaker 1:Now the prosecution in the trial disputed this version of events and there were some key pieces of evidence that countered Alec's statements. So, firstly, sled found a white t-shirt that alec was wearing that was covered in high velocity blood spatter the kind you would get covered in if you were close to someone being shot and alec had apparently changed out of it before the police arrived at moselle on that june night. Secondly, there was actually a video found on paul's phone that he sent to his friend, rogan Gibson of his dog Cash trying to see if his tail was okay. The video was taken at the kennels that night and in the background you can clearly hear Maggie's voice and Alex's voice. Now initially he had insisted that he wasn't at the kennels that night and Rogan Gibson actually testified at the trial that he definitely hurt Alec in the background of that video and that was quite a seminal, seminal moment in the trial.
Speaker 1:From a southern hunting family, the Murdochs had quite a large gun collection and prosecutors alleged that Murdoch used one of these guns, an assault style rifle, to kill Maggie. They were unable to find it and produce a trial. Now BBC News reports that quote the blackout rifle was referenced several times at court. As experts said, the shell casings from the murder scene match tool markings on the weathered casings elsewhere on the property, suggesting they were from the same gun. The Murdochs at one point had two custom blackout rifles given to Paul and his brother, buster, as Christmas gifts. Paul's was allegedly stolen in 2017 and a replacement was bought, but it was never found.
Speaker 1:So the fourth bit of evidence that was presented at trial that sort of really countered Alec's version of events was, as we know, maggie was staying at the beach house the family owned, rather than Moselle, and it was unusual that Alec asked her specifically to be at the house that night. He said it was to support him, as his father was dying and he actually died a few days after Maggie and Paul and that he wanted her to be there. And Maggie's sister did say that normally Maggie would stay at the beach house and not go to Moselle in the night, but Alec insisted he wanted her there. And finally, and possibly most persuasively, there were 43 pages of phone data that was presented at trial which disputed Blake's version of events. Specifically, his phone states that at 9.02pm it showed a burst of activity including 283 steps taken in four minutes. Not only that, but his mother's carer testified at the trial that Alex asked her to say that he had been with his mum for 30 to 40 minutes, whereas she stated that was not true and he was only there for about 20 minutes. And she also said that he was acting really strangely and was very fidgety when he was at his mum's. And after this evidence was presented, alec actually took the stand, which is quite rare for a defendant to do that. But he said during the trial that he had lied about being at the kennels and he also talked about again about his addiction and sort of said you know all the webs we weave when we aim to deceive. Talking about how much he had lied, now I'm not sure how he thought that was going to help him, but that was his sort of vibe.
Speaker 1:The defense argued during the trial that there were two shooters um that night I you know there were two different guns that were used were seeking revenge for the boat accident um paul caused. These shooters, nor any evidence of them, have never been found, as far as I know, and prosecutors allege that Alex's motivation behind killing Maggie and Paul was to cover up his financial fraud before it became public. Others have mooted that it might be to get rid of the criminal charges that were coming up against Paul for the boat crash that killed Mallory Beach. Why he would want to kill Maggie as well, though, is beyond me. Maybe it's because she was thinking of leaving him, who knows? But whatever his motivations, on Thursday March 2nd 2023, the jury found Murdoch guilty of all charges. He was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences and, like any entitled family annihilator, alec is seeking to appeal his convictions. Now we can never forget the five people associated with the Murdoch family that have lost their lives here. In the Netflix documentary, mallory's friends talked about wanting justice for her Stephen Smith and Gloria Satterfield and that is what we have hope for. This episode is dedicated to Maggie and Paul Murdoch, stephen Smith, gloria Satterfield and Mallory Beach, to the people they were, and everything they brought to this world, to their family and friends, is dedicated to all of them.
Speaker 1:This has been Killer in the Family podcast written and produced by me, claire Laxton, with music from the brilliant Tom Box and Pixabay. I'll be back next week with another episode, so please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Don't forget to send me any comments or questions to my Insta at Killer in theFamilyPod or through a text via the episode notes. Do let me know any stories you'd like me to cover as well. Until then, I've been Claire Laxton. This is Killer In the Family Podcast. Until next time, take care. Thank you. Thank you.
