Is anyone watching/following the Alex Murdaugh trial?

[louiswinthorpe111]

I watched the documentary os Netflix. I didn't find anyone in that family to have any redeeming qualities, not even the wife/mother.

[notoriousmkg]

Guilty.

[trixie]

Jury came back really fast. No shocker.

[fgg]

i'm pretty sure i called this over at the old place when the news first broke.

[notoriousmkg]

A legal commentator for NBC News last night was pointing out that South Carolina does NOT require a motive to be cited by prosecution during a trial - just means, opportunity, evidence, etc. So, the analyst said that prosecution took a little bit of a risk citing Alex's motive as being to distract/gain sympathy for himself because of the financial misdeeds that were going to be revealed.

I agree that that motivation angle sounds really weak. I cannot imagine a father and husband horrifically gunning down his own wife and son just to buy sympathy. Plus, there was nobody presented as a witness by either side that said the family was anything but close by their observations. The other issue, I believe is that the wife and son were killed with two different guns. Could Murdaugh really have pulled that off himself? Does this imply that there could be another conspirator walking around out there scot free? I don't know how close to each other the bodies were or in what direction they were facing.

But once again, Murdaugh flat out lied about not being anywhere near them just before the shootings. And did not realize he had been caught on his son's cell phone? Why would an innocent man lie about that? Telling the police about it from the outset, if you are innocent, could even help them narrow down a timeline regarding when the "actual assailants" were on the property committing the murders.

[sputnik]

^^^^
i don't think he was trying to buy sympathy, he was just trying to get out of the lawsuits for the death of the girl the son killed in the boating accident, and he killed his wife to get out of an expensive divorce that would cost him what little he had left. and the different guns is just misdirection to make it look like there were two murderers instead of one, and he could have pulled it off by luring either the wife or son out to the murder spot first, shooting them, and then pretending to freak out and scream to get the other one out. the fucker had been lying and buying his way out of trouble for years, and doing the same for his family, until the son fucked up so bad that he couldn't anymore, and his fuck-ups were going to expose the extent of the debt and embezzling hole he'd dug himself into. plus he was the 'lesser' son he never cared about unlike the oldest who was clearly the golden child of the family. and the wife was onto him and was going to leave. 

i'm going to check out the hbo documentary to see if it's better than the rush job the netflix one is. it's all about the teenagers and they're way too basic to be interviewed for that long and the boating accident isn't interesting enough to span that many episodes, and it takes way too long to finally get to the dad and his shady dealings which is where the case gets interesting. the dead kid was an abusive, alcoholic, rageaholic asshole, definitely the product of his upbringing in that family

[dilligaf]

Worthless pig, family annihilator like John List, Chris Watts and other worthless defects. Glad they threw away the key, may Buster go down before he kills someone (else?).

[kittylady]

So what's everyone's thought's on the surviving son?

[sputnik]

the netflix doco doesn't spend a lot of time on him. my sense is he's the golden child his parents adored and preferred over paul, and he's probably closeted in addition to being entitled and full of rage which seems to run in the family.

[no1novice]

Based on his hair alone, he'll have incandescent rage!

I do wonder if Buster did it & this is all a cover up by Alex to keep his son out of jail, but I haven't specificly been following it.








Alex's Brother is trying to save the family name & company

Breaking Silence, Murdaugh Brother Says ‘Not Knowing Is the Worst Thing’

After Alex Murdaugh’s trial ended in a conviction for the murders of his wife and son, his older brother Randy is still trying to understand what happened that night.


HAMPTON, S.C. — On the surface, the lives of Alex Murdaugh and his older brother Randy appeared to follow the same track: They were born two years apart, both went to the University of South Carolina for college and law school, and then the two worked as partners at the family firm that had grown out of the century-old law practice founded by their great-grandfather.

But even in college, it was clear they were different. Alex was briefly on the football team and a regular at college parties; Randy, a self-described “hometown boy,” would go back home to Hampton every weekend to hunt and fish. In recent years, their offices were close enough that Randy could hear his brother’s constant phone calls, but they rarely spent any time alone together.

“It’s not like there was some problem with our relationship, necessarily,” Randy Murdaugh said. “We just really weren’t alike, so we didn’t do stuff together.”

Then came Alex’s arrest in July 2022 for the murder of his wife and son, amid expanding allegations that he had stolen millions of dollars from clients and the law firm, which forced Randy to question whether he had ever truly known his brother.

A jury concluded last week after less than three hours of deliberations that Alex Murdaugh was guilty of the murders, but for Randy there has been no such certainty. He has spent nearly every day for the past 20 months trying to understand what might have happened on the night that Maggie and Paul Murdaugh were fatally shot.

In the first interview a family member has given since the trial, Randy Murdaugh said he had no doubt that his brother was a serial liar and a thief. He said he also believed that Alex had not told the whole truth about what he knew about the killings.



But asked directly whether he thought his brother carried out the murders, he said he still did not know. As a lawyer, he said, he respects the jury’s verdict, but he finds it impossible to picture Alex — a man he has known for decades as a protective husband and father — pulling the trigger and inflicting the carnage that prosecutors described as a crime of cold calculation.

“He knows more than what he’s saying,” Randy said. “He’s not telling the truth, in my opinion, about everything there.”



For his entire family, he said, that has been among the most painful issues to confront.

“The not knowing,” Randy says, “is the worst thing there is.”

Randy’s complicated view of the case, which he shared in a two-hour conversation on Sunday as he stacked wood at his hunting property outside the town of Hampton, was at odds with the definitive pronouncement that one of Alex Murdaugh’s lawyers made on Friday about the Murdaugh family.

“After six weeks of trial, they came away more convinced that he did not do this, and they are steadfastly in his camp and support him,” the lawyer, Jim Griffin, said at a news conference after Alex was sentenced to two life prison terms.

Alex Murdaugh’s younger brother, John Marvin Murdaugh, and surviving son, Buster Murdaugh, both testified for the defense at trial, saying that he had seemed devastated after the murders. Randy Murdaugh, who emphasized that he was speaking for himself and not any of his relatives, was not called to testify. He thinks it is possible no one put him on the stand because he did not align perfectly with either side.


In the weeks after the murders, the family mobilized to support Alex, grieving alongside him as he suggested that Paul must have been targeted over his involvement in a fatal boat crash in 2019, a theory that Alex Murdaugh continued to push during his trial.

About three months after the killings, Randy said, the other law partners called Randy in to look at some financial records that appeared to show without a doubt that Alex had been stealing from the firm. Randy and another partner confronted Alex the next morning, he said, in a tense conversation in which Alex admitted to the embezzlement and revealed a serious addiction to painkillers, which Alex said prompted the thefts. Randy recalled that his brother seemed relieved to come clean.

Alex promised that morning that he would never lie to him again. It took about 24 hours for him to break that promise, Randy said, when he told Randy and the police that he had been shot on the side of the road by an unknown assailant. In fact, the police later said, Alex had asked someone to kill him. When that fact emerged, Alex claimed it had been an attempted suicide, telling the police that he had hoped that if his death was ruled a murder, it would allow Buster to collect on his life insurance.

Over the next several months, as Alex Murdaugh was charged with stealing more than $8 million from the law firm and clients, Randy said he came to see his brother as a deeply flawed man and a liar. They have not spoken in nearly a year.

Randy said he also began to think back on Alex’s behavior in the first few weeks after the murders. At the time, it seemed like the police had few leads, and Randy began to call just about everyone he thought might help, asking if they had heard anything to suggest why Maggie and Paul might have been targeted. He passed on whatever he heard to the police.

“I spent considerable time, day after day for weeks on end, calling people,” he said. But Alex, he said, never did. Maggie’s sister testified at trial to the same effect, saying she found it odd that Alex never talked about who might have been the killer. He did tell her, she said, that he imagined whoever had done so had “thought about it for a long time.”


Before the murders, Randy had been content to live a relatively simple life, making a good living at the family firm, raising two daughters and spending weekends hunting at an idyllic property just outside of Hampton. But much of that life has been ripped apart as international attention has been trained on the Lowcountry region of South Carolina and his family. Now, much of the Murdaugh family is focused on supporting Buster, 26, who has lost his entire immediate family.

Randy is continuing at the law firm, including taking on a few of his brother’s former clients. He feels the need to explain.

“‘Listen, I’m not him. I’m doing things the right way, always have,’” he tells clients. “I don’t beat around the bush.”


Unlike his siblings, John Marvin and Lynn Murdaugh Goettee, Randy did not attend every day of the six-week trial in Walterboro. On one day last month, as Alex sat at the defense table, his every move scrutinized by spectators and people around the country watching on TV, Randy was standing before a judge in a nearly empty courtroom a short drive away.

There, in the Hampton County Courthouse, he was handling a settlement for a family that his brother had represented long before his embezzlement was exposed. In court, Randy ticked through each of the extra steps that he had taken to make sure the clients were not among those from whom Alex had stolen money.

“It was overkill, but I have to do that,” Randy said.

He said he never really expected the murder trial to offer him the definitive answer he has been looking for, but he had hoped that he might be able to stop his lawyer’s mind from running through all the possible scenarios of what happened on that tragic night in June 2021.

“I hoped that after the trial, because there’s nothing more that can be presented, that I’d stop thinking about this,” he said. “But so far, that has not been the case.”

Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs reports on national news. He is from upstate New York and previously reported in Baltimore, Albany, and Isla Vista, Calif. @nickatnews
www.nytimes.com/2023/03/06/us/alex-murdaugh-brother-randy.html

[lindsaywhit]

Does Buster have an alibi?

[no1novice]

He was (allegedly) at his girlfriend's place.


Son of Murdaugh Housekeeper Who Died in 'Trip and Fall' Wants Body Exhumed 'to See If There's Any Foul Play'
Gloria Satterfield died at the Murdaugh family home in February 2018; her death was later ruled an accidental trip and fall
By Charmaine Patterson
Published on March 9, 2023 10:05 PM
Gloria Satterfield
Gloria Satterfield. Photo: Brice W. Herndon and Sons Funeral Home

The son of a Murdaugh family housekeeper who died at the Murdaughs' South Carolina home in 2018 wants her body exhumed to make sure "foul play" wasn't a factor in her death.

Gloria Satterfield, who worked for the Murdaugh family for more than 20 years, died at their home in February 2018. At the time, her death was classified as an accidental trip and fall, but authorities reopened the investigation last year and announced that Gloria's body would be exhumed.

Now, one of her sons, Michael "Tony" Satterfield, is speaking out.

When asked by Chris Cuomo on Tuesday's episode of Cuomo why her body may need to be exhumed, Tony replied: "To see if there's any foul play or anything."
Family of Murdaugh Housekeeper Killed in 'Trip and Fall' Speaks Out: 'It's Like She Was a Nobody'

Further questioned if he thinks foul play was involved, Tony said, "No, I do not," as he confirmed to Cuomo that he simply wants reassurance.

Cuomo then referenced comments made by Alex Murdaugh's brother, Randy Murdaugh, a week after Alex was convicted for the June 2021 killings of his wife Maggie, 52, and son Paul, 22.

In an interview with The New York Times, Randy acknowledged that his brother Alex has lied and stolen from his former clients. He added that though he's unsure if Alex killed Maggie and Paul, he believes the convicted murderer "knows more than what he's saying. He's not telling the truth, in my opinion, about everything there."


Responding to the comments, Tony said, "I guess it means a lot."

His attorney, Eric Bland, added that Randy's comments show he appears to be "separating" from his family, noting that Randy was hardly present during Alex's six-week trial.

As for how it relates to the Satterfield family, Bland said, "Everything around Alex is danger, lies, deception. We know that he capitalized on Gloria's death financially and used it as an opportunity to enrich himself at the expense of the boys who were exploited in this process."

Bland added that exhuming Gloria's body could give authorities insight on what really caused her death.

"The police have some doubts about Alex's story. He told an insurance adjuster exactly what he thought happened, which is that the dogs pushed Gloria down the stairs. It's gonna be difficult when they exhume her body, Chris, to really determine were those done by human hands or by the fall," he said.


"She flipped twice obviously ...," continued Bland. "She had significant closed-head injury and open-head injury with 12 broken ribs. The real issue is gonna be if somebody was told before Paul and Maggie died — or Alex goes off to jail, Alex obviously isn't going to say anything — if they know something."

Still, Bland explained why he doesn't believe Gloria was murdered.

"I don't think anybody would try to kill her and then let her get in an ambulance to go to a hospital to get medical treatment only to survive and say, 'Look, I didn't get pushed down the stairs by dogs, it was by human hands.' "

Tony then addressed allegations that Alex tried to steal from the Satterfields after Gloria's death, stating that he feels "betrayed" and "shocked."


Gloria was pronounced dead at Trident Medical Center in North Charleston after being injured in a reported trip-and-fall incident while working inside the Murdaughs' Hampton County home on Feb. 26, 2018.

In September 2021, South Carolina Law Enforcement Division officials stated that a coroner had found inconsistencies surrounding Gloria's death. The incident was not reported to the coroner in 2018, and there was no autopsy performed at the time.

In a civil lawsuit also filed in fall of 2021, Tony and his brother Brian Harriott alleged that they never received the insurance money that they were supposed to receive after a wrongful death suit.

In a lawsuit previously obtained by PEOPLE, Gloria's sons alleged that Alex approached them after Gloria died. They claimed that Alex told them to sue him.

According to the lawsuit, Alex personally introduced Gloria's sons to attorney Cory Fleming and recommended that he should represent them in the lawsuit.

Alex did not disclose at the time that Fleming had been his college roommate and was the godfather to one of his sons, the lawsuit alleged.

According to the complaint, Alex's insurance company agreed to a partial settlement of the claims associated with Gloria's death in the amount of $505,000 to her sons.

But Tony and Brian claimed that they never received their cut of the money. They have since hired new lawyers.

Alex's attorney did not immediately respond to PEOPLE's request for comment.

[no1novice]

Death of Stephen Smith, classmate & alleged boyfriend of ruddy Buster Murdaugh already reopened +- progress to follow?




Alex Murdaugh’s murder conviction has cast a spotlight on the mysterious death of his surviving son Buster’s classmate.

Stephen Smith, a 19-year-old openly gay teenager, was found dead in the middle of a road in Hampton County back in 2015 – not far from the Murdaugh family’s Moselle estate where Maggie and Paul were murdered six years later.

He had suffered blunt force trauma to the head and his car was found around three miles away down the road.

His death was officially ruled a hit-and-run but the victim’s family – and investigators who worked on the initial case – have long doubted this version of events.

Police reports revealed that the scene, and some of Smith’s injuries, were inconsistent with being struck by a car.
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There have also long been murmurings in the community that a “Murdaugh boy” may have been involved and the Murdaugh name came up 40 times in documents in the initial case, reported Live5News.

Smith had been a classmate of Buster Murdaugh – Alex Murdaugh’s eldest and now only surviving son – and there were rumours that the two had been in a relationship around the time of his death.

For years, Smith’s mother Sandy Smith has fought for answers and tried to keep his death in the local spotlight – but the case was closed and there were no developments for six years.

Then, on 7 June 2021, Murdaugh gunned down his wife Maggie and son Paul on the affluent family’s sprawling 1,700-acre estate in Islandton and the Smith case came under the spotlight once more.

Just days after the murders, the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) led announced that it was reopening an investigation into Smith’s death based on information that had come to light during the investigation into Maggie and Paul’s murders.

It is not clear what information prompted the launch of the investigation into Smith’s death and no further details have been released over the course of the last 21 months.


In January 2023, SLED only said it had “made progress” in the case.

Last week, Murdaugh was convicted of Maggie and Paul’s murders, following a dramatic six-week trial in Colleton County Courthouse in Walterboro, South Carolina.

He has been sentenced to life in prison and is now in the custody of the South Carolina prison system.

As the convicted killer and disgraced attorney was led out of the courthouse on Friday, a bystander shouted that “Buster is next” for “justice” – an apparent reference to the Smith case.

Now, the Hampton County community is turning its attention back to Smith’s death and Smith’s mother Sandy is hoping she will finally get answers.

“This circus is over and now it’s time to bring justice for other people,” Sandy Smith told The New York Post Sunday.

The Independent has reached out to SLED for further details about the investigation into Smith’s death.

[lindsaywhit]

This family is shockingly rotten. I keep waiting for Veronica Harrington and Katherine Cryer to show up.

[no1novice]

Where Is Buster Murdaugh From Murdaugh Murders Now?

The surviving son from the true crime series recently testified in his father's trial.
By Philip EllisPublished: Feb 27, 2023
Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal - Official Trailer (Netflix)
by Digital Spy GB

Netflix's latest true crime docu-series is Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal, the story of the Murdaughs, a wealthy South Carolina family. Murdaugh Murders explores the multiple incidents that the family of litigators have been linked to, including a boating accident in which somebody died, and the events that preceded the deaths of matriarch Margaret "Maggie" Murdaugh and her son Paul in the summer of 2021.

The series also partially covers the ongoing trial of Alex Murdaugh, Maggie's husband and Paul's father, who was charged with their murders but has maintained his innocence and pled not guilty. A fourth member of the Murdaugh family, Maggie and Alex's other son Buster, is also included in the documentary.

Richard Alex Murdaugh, nicknamed Buster, was previously working at his father's legal practice and attending law school at the University of South Carolina—something of a family tradition—before the murder of his mother and brother. However, he was eventually kicked out over an incident involving plagarism.

According to local paper The Post and Courier, Buster's family paid $60,000 in order to ensure that he would be readmitted to the college in order to complete his law degree. However, he has yet to recommence his studies. "He has put his desire to go to law school on hold for now," the Murdaugh's lawyer, Butch Bowers, said. "There is no plan for him to start school in the fall or in the spring."
Where is Buster Murdaugh now?

Buster currently lives with his girlfriend, lawyer Brooklynn White, in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. It is uncertain what he does for a living. In February of this year, he testified in his father's trial as a first witness for the defense—in other words, he testified on his father's behalf, and said that Alex was "heartbroken" by the deaths of Maggie and Paul.
Buster has been linked to two other deaths

One of the incidents documented in Murdaugh Murders was the boating accident that resulted in the death of Mallory Beach. The Beach family have claimed that Paul Murdaugh was drunk at the time, but have since agreed to a settlement that removes Buster's name from the case, along with that of his mother.

The documentary also includes mention of the hit-and-run death of Stephen Smith, a former friend and classmate of Buster's, which remains unsolved.