Over the last four months, the South Carolina lawyer Alex Murdaugh has become the focal point of a sprawling saga focused on a string of deaths. Murdaugh’s great-grandfather, grandfather, and father each worked as the chief prosecutor at the 14th Circuit Solicitor’s Office in South Carolina, establishing a legal dynasty that has spanned more than a century. But the scion has now been criminally charged for a second time in recent months, after state authorities alleged on Thursday that Murdaugh had stolen funds from a settlement intended for the two sons of his former housekeeper, Gloria Satterfield, who died in 2018.
Satterfield died after falling on the steps of Murdaugh’s home, and as TheNew York Times reported on Thursday, Murdaugh then connected her two sons, Tony Satterfield and Brian Harriott, with a lawyer who he said would help them—without mentioning, the sons claimed in a lawsuit, that the lawyer in question was his old college roommate. The lawyer, Cory Fleming, arranged a $4.3 million settlement with Murdaugh and his insurers, but about $3 million of it allegedly ended up in Murdaugh’s own bank account after Murdaugh told Fleming to send him the money to start a fund for the sons, according to the lawsuit.
Murdaugh was charged with two counts of obtaining property by false pretenses. He was arrested at a drug detox facility in Orlando and is expected to appear at a bond hearing in South Carolina on Friday.
The new charges follow additional allegations of insurance fraud and filing a false police report. In September, authorities claim, Murdaugh asked one of his cousins, Curtis Smith, to shoot and kill him on the side of the road in order for his death to be ruled a murder and not a suicide. According to the Times, Murdaugh has admitted to the scheme, and his lawyers have said that he worried that his older son wouldn’t be able to collect on his $10 million life insurance policy if his death were ruled a suicide. After Murdaugh survived the shooting, Smith was charged with attempting to assist Murdaugh’s suicide and gun counts, all of which he denies. (Smith has said that he didn’t pull the trigger, and that the gun went off when he tried to stop Murdaugh from killing himself, per the Times.)
The two sets of criminal charges represent only a sliver of the mysteries surrounding Murdaugh and his family that have garnered national attention in recent months. In June, Murdaugh’s wife, Maggie, and another son, Paul, were both shot to death before Murdaugh found their bodies on the family’s property. The murders remain unsolved. Before his death, Paul faced charges of drunkenly crashing a boat into a bridge, resulting in the death of Mallory Beach, who was aboard the boat. As the Times noted, Murdaugh was asked to resign from his law firm last month after finding that he’d allegedly stolen millions of dollars from the company and clients. (An attorney for Murdaugh confirmed to the Times in September that his client had left the firm after being accused of misusing funds.)
“Alex intends to fully cooperate with this investigation, as he has with the investigation into the murder of his wife and son,” his lawyers Dick Harpootlian and Jim Griffin, told the Times after the news of the charges on Thursday. “He deeply regrets that his actions have distracted from the efforts to solve their murders.”
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