The lawyer who tried faking his death, and the writer exposing his crime dynasty

Real-life villains don’t come more sharply drawn than Alex Murdaugh, a greedy and ghoulish personal injuries lawyer who casts a haunting shadow over the state of South Carolina. For nearly a century, his father and grandfather were the prosecutors for a five-county district while also running a powerful private law firm.

But it wasn’t until the small hours of 24 February 2019 that the dark veil over the Murdaugh family’s dealings began to slip. That’s when Alex’s son Paul is alleged to have plowed the family’s 17-foot bay boat into a bridge abutting Parris Island, the nation’s largest Marine recruit depot. Among the three people cast overboard was an ebullient 19-year-old former high school soccer player named Mallory Beach. She was found dead in the murky tidewaters near the crash site after a seven-day search. ...

...

“My life turned upside down on 7 June,” Matney tells me on the chilly November evening we meet in downtown Beaufort. The Friday night begins with dinner at Luther’s, the pub where CCTV cameras caught Paul Murdaugh downing lemon drops and Jaeger shots just before taking to the water (ostensibly to circumnavigate roadside DUI checkpoints) and ends with digestifs and coffee on a twinkling restaurant deck off Waterfront Park – the last place those same cameras spied Mallory Beach alive. ...

An update and backgrounder on the Murdaugh case (murder, corrption, drugs, embezzlement, politics, ...) and the reporter who's been breaking the case ... and having to switch publications in order to do so after her original publication refused to give her free reign over the story.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/dec/16/mandy-matney-alex-murdaugh-writer-crime-story

#AlexMurdaugh #SouthCarolina #Murder #ProsecutorialMisconduct #Corruption #Journalism #InvestigativeJournalism