#alexmurdaugh

birne@diaspora.psyco.fr

In his opening remarks in the court session when #AlexMurdaugh got his sentence the judge said something like that of all the murderers who had sat before him he never heard someone who was able or willing to describe the very moment at which they turned into a murderer. I've been finding that thought very interesting ever since, the psychological search for the phenomenological moment in time after which you're a murderer, and before which you weren't: What happens in your mind at this exact moment? Here is someone who tries to give that answer - and yet apparently veeres off in the end. But the text does answer one other question, the one as to my motives:

After all, since meeting #Macarthur and beginning to write about those crimes, I myself had been preoccupied with a similar problem: how does one turn a life [...] into a story?

Because that's what I've been preoccupied with for the past couple of years. Not mine, of course, but life is life, after all.

Btw. I'm pretty sure the answer to the question will be completely banal.

#Guardian #CBS #Criminology #Psychology #Phenomenology #writing

dredmorbius@diaspora.glasswings.com

South Carolina Lawyer Alex Murdaugh Charged With Killing Wife and Son

Alex Murdaugh, the fourth-generation lawyer whose family has long held power and influence in a rural swath of South Carolina, was charged on Thursday with killing his wife and one of his sons at the family’s secluded hunting estate in a mysterious murder that remained unsolved for more than a year.

Mr. Murdaugh, 54, was indicted on two counts of murder, with prosecutors saying he fatally shot his wife, Maggie Murdaugh, 52, with a rifle and his son Paul Murdaugh, 22, with a shotgun, on June 7, 2021. Alex Murdaugh had called 911 that night from the family’s estate in Islandton, about 65 miles west of Charleston, saying he had returned home to find his wife and son dead near his dog kennel. ...

The long strange and quite multi-generational story of power, murder, corruption, and politics in South Carolina continues.

Previously: https://diaspora.glasswings.com/posts/c71d5e2040fa013a6a93002590d8e506

(A few other posts though I apparently hadn't hashtagged those.)

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/14/us/alex-murdaugh-indicted.html

#AlexMurdaugh #SouthCarolina #Murder #ProsecutorialMisconduct #Power #Corruptoin #Murder

dredmorbius@joindiaspora.com

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