Original subtitles

- Money, position, power...

The Murdaughs have had control of Hampton County

for close to a century.

- Where the Murdaughs go, death seems to follow.

- Maggie and Paul Murdaugh

were shot to death execution style.

No suspects have been named,

and no arrests have been made in that case.

- Good evening, everybody.

Andrew Davis out here in Hampton County right now

with the story that really everybody is talking about.

Alex Murdaugh called 911 to say he had been shot.

- Someone's going through great distances

to punish this family.

They didn't think Maggie and Paul were enough.

- Many people thought that this was the act of some vigilante.

- Overnight, South Carolina law enforcement

announcing an arrest.

- Law enforcement now believes Murdaugh

conspired with Curtis "Eddie" Smith

to kill him as part of an insurance fraud scheme.

- Every single part of it,

everything that Alex said that day

ended up being a hoax.

- It was like a domino effect, one right after the other.

What else has he done?

Jimmy, where's Griffin?

Jim!

- I was with him that morning he was shot.

In his mind, he was ready to give up.

I said, "You know, Alex, there's an end to this,

"and there's a life beyond this.

"And you need to be here for your family,

"and Buster loves you, and, you know,

we all support you 100%."

And he told me that he had an opioid addiction

and that he had been struggling with it for many, many years

and it was very expensive.

- Alex Murdaugh's speaking for the first time in weeks,

this time from a Savannah hospital bed.

The patriarch of the family making big decisions

as he recovers from a gunshot wound.

"The murders of my wife and son have caused

"an incredibly difficult time in my life.

"I've made a lot of decisions that I truly regret.

"I'm resigning from my law firm

"and entering rehab after a long battle

that's been exacerbated by these murders."

- After Alex was shot, first thing he did

was admit that he had an opioid addiction and a problem

and then went immediately to rehab.

- Is he going home with you guys?

- The murder of his son and wife 90 days ago

took a tremendous toll on him.

Most people couldn't get through that.

He got through it with the use of opioids.

- That hole, that void just keeps getting bigger,

and you feel for the family.

You know, I felt sorry for him.

- I feel like he didn't want to live anymore...

With Maggie and Paul gone.

To lose your wife and son...

Nobody deserves that.

- For you to get to that point to want to take your life,

you are at rock bottom.

That's what the drugs do.

I did not know that he was an addict.

I mean, none of my friends and family knew

when I was deep down in that rabbit hole either.

There's a couple places that you're gonna be.

You're gonna be in jail, dead,

or wishing you were dead.

- Whether Maggie knew he had an opioid addiction or not,

I don't know.

There's so many questions still out there

about their relationship.

There may have been difficulty in their marriage.

You know, I've heard through various rumors and sources

that, you know, Maggie may not have been really living

at the main property with him,

that she may have been in the Edisto property.

People who've spoken to me

say they believe that Alex had a mistress.

- Rumor is that she wanted a divorce.

And why did she want a divorce?

- There's so much misinformation

out there and bullshit.

Can you run bullshit?

Maggie and Alex being estranged...

There's nothing further from the truth.

After the boating accident, Maggie felt uncomfortable

in Hampton, and she preferred, you know,

to distance herself from the small community.

And so she was spending time at Edisto.

They were communicating in very loving fashion...

Jokes with each other.

Sign off at night, "I love you."

"I love you more."

- They were close, always,

you know, hugging on each other.

- You know, they're at their kids' sporting events.

They were active parents.

- You could tell...

Just the interaction between the two...

That they loved each other.

They met in college.

Randy, his dad, told me Alex had met somebody

and he was chasing her.

When he met Maggie, the world stopped, and...

he was head over heels in love with her.

- From what I knew, there wasn't no problems.

But who does know what's going on

behind closed doors or whatever?

- I think they loved each other.

I don't know that they were in love with each other,

but they were both very much in love

with how they were viewed in society,

you know, their family and their name and their...

Their power.

- What we can say about Alex Murdaugh right now

is that he was addicted.

Whether he was addicted to opioids,

or was he just addicted to money?

But how far was he willing to go to keep his lifestyle,

to keep that Murdaugh name front and center?

- Gloria Satterfield had been

the Murdaugh family's housekeeper

and, essentially, a nanny to Alex Murdaugh's kids

for about 20 years

and was treated very much like a family member herself.

Several years ago, there was an accident

at the Murdaugh home.

- According to them, you know, the Murdaugh family dog

accidentally knocked her down the stairs,

and she ended up passing away from her injuries.

- At or after her funeral, apparently,

Alex Murdaugh approached her sons.

- And he's like, "Hey, look, I'm sorry about what happened,

"and I'm gonna make sure you get taken care of.

Don't worry. I have insurance."

- He had, apparently, a $500,000 liability policy

and a multimillion-dollar umbrella policy on his home.

And he told them that if they would go visit his friend

Cory Fleming Cory would get

the Satterfield boys some money.

Fleming brought those claims against the insurance company.

There was $4.3 million that the insurance companies paid,

and neither Cory nor Alex ever told their clients.

- And the boys got none of it, not a penny.

- How he got away with what he did is,

the money went through Cory Fleming's firm,

and Cory Fleming's records showed that the money

went from there to Forge.

Now, Forge Consulting is a legitimate

settlement funding company.

Cory Fleming wrote the checks to Forge...

Not Forge Consulting, just the word "Forge"...

And delivered them to Alex Murdaugh.

- So he went and created an account at Bank of America:

R. Alexander Murdaugh doing business as Forge.

- Giving the appearance that the plaintiffs'

settlement money went to Forge Consulting.

But that's actually a personal bank account.

- And he starts moving millions of dollars

into there.

- Yes, it's very calculated.

- The good old boy network runs rampant

through this entire ordeal.

- Here, it's mostly politicians,

law enforcement,

bankers, and lawyers.

And they kind of do this,

"You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours,"

do favors for each other, things like that, so...

And that's just kind of how it is around here.

- Hampton is pretty much historically dominated

by a few influential names...

The Murdaughs, that's PMPED;

the Laffittes, that's Palmetto State Bank...

Families who had the upper hand, the power,

and the control for 100 years.

- Palmetto State Bank has several branches now

across the Lowcountry.

And the board of directors is filled with members

of the Laffitte family.

And then there's the relationship

between Russell Laffitte and Alex Murdaugh.

- Alex was able to walk into Palmetto State Bank

and use his connections with Russell Laffitte

to say, "Hey, Beau, I need this done."

- Alex Murdaugh had the ability to skip protocols

that most of us have to go through.

And that's just how they looked out for each other.

That is the good old boy system.

- This really is a case of...

institutional evil

manifesting itself

and not just one crazy lawyer.

This is the product of...

decades of entitlement, of privilege.

The Murdaughs are part of a club.

- Club of white people, powerful white people,

who got to run things.

This is the culmination of years of no accountability.

- With Alex Murdaugh, it's a character flaw.

You know, it ain't like, ooh, this deals with case finances,

so my moral compass is broken on this one issue.

If your moral compass is broken,

that shit don't never work.

If you'd be that disrespectful to the lady who, like,

helped tuck your kids in at night to sleep,

what won't you do to somebody?

You know, now, a lot of people

weren't really buying the whole dogs...

knocked her down the stairs narrative.

- I don't know, but I don't think

she tripped over the dogs.

Because when you listen to the 911 tape,

she never mentions the dogs.

- I just think if I was on the phone,

calling 911 and saying, "Oh, my God,

"you know, my housekeeper just tripped over my dog,

and she fell"... you know,

but the dogs don't come up, ever.

- I have a difficult time believing

how dogs that you're around all the time,

in a house that you're more familiar with

than the people who own it...

And the dogs jumped on you

and knocked you down the stairs...

But I wasn't there.

So I don't know.

- Maggie was initially on that call.

Then Paul got on that call.

- It's very interesting to hear his demeanor especially.

911 operator asking some pretty simple questions,

and he's pretty upset about the fact

that they're asking questions,

not as much of, "This woman is bleeding

to death on our stairs."

So the rumor is that Paul

may have been involved somehow in this death,

whether it's pushing, tripping, something of the sort.

- Gloria Satterfield, you know,

they pushed her down the stairs.

That was no accident.

That was on purpose.

I think she found something.

You know, I've heard that she found his stash of drugs.

She was gonna tell his daddy.

- There's been talk for a long time here.

Something in the milk ain't clean.

- Alex Murdaugh, the prominent attorney

at the center of a case involving murder, money,

and mystery, was arrested today in Orange County

while leaving a drug rehab facility in Central Florida.

- I was in the newsroom, and bulletin came out

that Alex Murdaugh had gotten arrested.

And your mind just wanders on, what was he arrested for?

What is he connected to?

And why now?

- Alex Murdaugh is charged with two counts

of obtaining property by false pretense.

Murdaugh's longtime housekeeper

died after an accident in his home back in 2018.

Her family filed a lawsuit in September,

saying they never received any money from her estate.

Murdaugh's law firm fired him,

saying they discovered that Murdaugh

had misappropriated funds.

- Your Honor, he has fallen from grace.

His wife and son were brutally murdered.

And that has had an extraordinary effect on him.

Are you okay?

So we'd ask you to allow him to go and help heal himself.

This is a 20-year addiction.

This is not... this is something he's struggling with

every day.

And if anyone wants to see the face

of what opioid addiction does, you're looking at it.

Thank you, Your Honor.

- Well, this can't be the first time he did it.

Right? There's no way the first time you stole money

was with this level of cover-up

in a wrongful death case for $4.3 million.

He had to have been doing it before.

And then people found out

he'd been doing it for over a decade.

- There are new victims in the Murdaugh money mess.

- 23 new charges

all accusing Alex Murdaugh

of stealing from his own clients.

- Now other families who lost loved ones are coming forward.

They tell eerily similar accounts

of missing money after tragic deaths.

- There are a number of victims here.

You have victims like Hakeem Pinckney.

Hakeem was a young deaf man,

had just graduated high school.

And this family is just driving down the road,

and boom, tragedy hits.

Tire tread comes off. Car flips.

Hakeem is rendered a quadriplegic

in this accident,

end up in a nursing home.

And he dies.

And then Alex steals their money,

almost $1 million.

Johnny Bush

was a really bad accident.

He's got hardware in his back.

Alex stole his money.

Blondell Gary...

On their way in the ambulance to the hospital,

the ambulance wrecks.

She's no longer with us.

And he steals the money.

Trooper Moore of the South Carolina Highway Patrol...

Alex takes the money.

Malik Williams, Jamian Risher.

And the list goes on and on and on.

Alex Murdaugh successfully stole

almost $10 million

from clients both living and dead.

- Alex zeroed in on minorities,

poor people,

injured people,

people that couldn't really defend themselves

and had probably come to Alex

because it was their last chance.

- It's outrageous that it was a wealthy person

preying on so many people who had so little.

- As the charges started piling up,

you started to realize exactly how far Alex went.

When you're looking into not just 10, 20, 30,

40, 50, 60, 70-plus charges...

So it's basically

nearly 150 years in jail

or more if he is

convicted of all the crimes.

- Hard for me to comprehend

what has happened to him.

'Cause he's such a...

A good guy.

He may not have been good to everybody.

I don't know.

- For some people,

cheating other people is almost like sex to them.

It's a big high for them

to know they've gotten something over on people.

And that might be the basis of some of what he's done.

- Hello, this is an MTEL operator

calling from Alvin S. Glenn Detention.

All phone calls are subject to monitoring and recording.

- There's no remorse.

Zero care about anybody.

- One of the outstanding questions in this case

continues to be, where did all of the money go?

- He may be trying to hide millions of dollars.

- It is impossible to burn that kind of money

in Hampton, South Carolina.

- Well, that's the million-dollar question.

I have no idea where the money is.

He claims to have had an opioid problem

that he spent a lot of it on.

- I don't know how you can spend that much

if it was strictly for the addiction.

- But then the question becomes,

is, what did he need the money for?

Was it drugs? Was it a lifestyle?

Was he, you know, traveling places we don't know about?

- They did not live a flashy lifestyle.

Certainly, they had perks.

Certainly, they had nice things.

But it's not the lifestyle of multimillions.

So the vices that I can think of

are gambling,

or maybe someone was blackmailing him

and he had to pay lots of money out.

- Was he just living higher than he should have been?

Did he have other people he was taking care of,

like, you know, the possibility of mistresses

that had been rumored out there.

Alex is the only person who knows

where that money went, what he did with it,

and does it still exist.

- Alex comes from a line of people who are the law.

He probably felt that no matter

what trouble he went into,

he would find a way out of it.

We don't even know if we know everything.

Every time we thought that the story was gonna end,

there was a new piece of information

that just made it more fantastical, more insane,

and created more question marks into, who are the Murdaughs,

and how are they involved in so many different crimes?

- On that day, June the 7th,

Alex comes home from work around 6:30

and met Paul.

And he and Paul rode around the fields,

inspecting the property.

They were just, you know, hanging out together.

And then they met their mother, and they had dinner.

I've got all their phone records

leading up until the murder.

And they're talking to each other.

Maggie's talking to Paul, and Paul's talking to Alex.

They were communicating in a very loving fashion.

After dinner, Maggie left the house

to go run the dogs.

Paul left the house 'cause Paul never stayed inside.

And Alex, frankly, doesn't know where Paul went.

Alex says that he laid down on the couch and watched TV

and fell asleep.

And he woke up about 9:00,

and he wanted to go check on his mother

so tries to call Maggie first,

and she doesn't answer.

And he tries to call Paul, and he doesn't answer.

And he texts Maggie and says, "I'll be right back."

He leaves.

And he is on his phone from 9:03 through 9:21.

At 9:21, he calls his mother's house phone,

asking the nurse's aide to let him in.

His mother's in bed. She has dementia.

She's watching a game show.

And Alex sits on the bed, and the nurse's aide

says he's same old Alex.

There's no stress.

And he stays there for about 20 minutes.

And then he comes back, and he gets on the phone again.

And he's chatting it up with his friends.

And then he arrives back to Moselle,

a little bit after 10:00.

The house was still locked up,

and there'd been no sign that either Paul or Maggie

had come into the house.

He got back in his car

and drove down to the dog kennel.

And that's where he discovers their bodies.

- He immediately goes to check to see if they're alive.

He rolls Paul over,

and Paul has been shot with a shotgun twice

inside the feed room of the dog kennel

at very close range.

- Two shots with a shotgun is... extreme overkill.

At close range, within, say, 10 feet,

all the pellets are gonna hit in a single mass.

It's gonna eviscerate your organs.

Paul had two wounds on his body:

one to the chest and then one to the head, neck area.

That's why Paul was reportedly

almost decapitated from the incident.

- Alex goes and checks Maggie, and there's no pulse.

Her body is found about 30 yards away from Paul's.

Maggie is shot multiple times

from a distance in her leg,

shot in her wrist,

another shot in her torso.

And then there were two last shots

while she was on the ground

at close range.

- With Maggie, it was an AR-15 that was used.

I think she begins to run.

That's why you see the shots are kind of going up her body

in the fashion that they are.

Once she falls to the ground,

then you walk over to her,

and then you shoot the final shots.

Now, to walk over to her...

Possibly still on the ground, begging for her life...

And then to stand over her

and shoot straight down to the ground

into her head, that's...

I think it's unfathomable for a normal human being.

- The multiple gunshot wounds indicate

that both Maggie and Paul were meant to be dead.

A very sinister person committed these crimes.

It was intentional.

It doesn't feel like anybody snapped.

It does feel like a very in-cold-blood situation.

- Immediately upon learning of Paul and Maggie's death,

many people, me included,

thought that this was the act

of some delusional vigilante.

- Who might have the motive, the means,

and the opportunity

to want one or both of these victims dead?

- What was the motivation, other than anger or revenge?

- The first thought that everybody had was,

who would be this rogue person to go ahead and kill?

Because who did Alex maybe upset

or Paul upset somewhere?

Was it the Mallory Beach family,

who was still involved in a civil lawsuit

but they also had grief over the fact

that Mallory was gone?

Was it Stephen Smith's family, who was connected to this

because they've never gotten justice for their son,

in their mind?

Was it somebody from a drug deal perspective

after Alex came out and said

that "I'm addicted to opioids"?

- We're still learning more about what exactly happened

behind these gates of this hunting lodge

here in Colleton County.

A SLED spokesperson tells me that while this is

being called a double homicide,

there is no danger to the public right now

and that at last report,

they were not looking for suspects in this case.

- After the murders, there was a call

to say that the public is not in danger,

which would let you think

that they know exactly who the killer was.

The person that finds the body, many times,

is a prime suspect.

But Alex had a specific

and potentially convenient alibi

if you go see one of your parents

at the same time that these murders happened.

- I don't think, at this point,

we know if anybody was there with her.

I've never gotten a sense that any of the brothers

were there or anyone else that's come out and said,

"I saw Alex an hour before the murder.

I saw Alex when these murders happened."

No one has come out to give him that full alibi,

and the only person who could has dementia,

and her mind is not all the way there.

If there's no one else there, then Alex's only alibi

is with a woman who, unfortunately,

if you took the stand, wouldn't pass muster.

- At the time,

Maggie and Alex were living separately.

She was living at their beach house in Edisto,

and he was living at Moselle.

So I think one of the big questions was,

why was Maggie at Moselle the night that she was murdered

if she wasn't living there anymore?

- This is a couple that, from all reports,

were on the outs,

and then you're gonna have a sit-down dinner together.

It seems very unusual.

- There has since been some reporting that has come out

that Alex asked Maggie to meet him at Moselle,

and then the two of them would go together

to see his ailing parents.

In text messages to a friend, Maggie says it's fishy.

She thinks that he's up to something.

She agreed to go, and according to this report,

she went straight to the dog kennels

and got out of the car,

and the car was still running

before she was murdered.

- I don't think the dinner can really be proven.

There's no one there to corroborate

the story about the dinner,

making them look like they're so close.

It's my opinion that it's just another story

that Alex has made up to make himself look better.

- There's a mixed bag of rumors right now

about divorce lawyers and whether she

had actually contacted one.

I think it's definitively in play

that she was considering the fact of,

"Maybe it's time to get a divorce,

or I need to separate from Alex."

- I mean, the question is, did Maggie know

that Alex had got his account down

to negative $100,000 and change?

If their marriage was on the rocks

and they were separated a bit and considering divorce,

well, one thing that has to happen is,

if you're splitting up, you need to know

what your cut is,

which requires a financial audit.

If you had done one on his finances,

you would have found that he was embezzling money.

But is money enough to make a person kill their spouse?

I don't know.

- I think he knew that this was a house of cards.

He knew that there was the potential for real danger

and that it would all point right back at him,

and Paul and Maggie were the first two people

that would point right at him.

- Alex done killed 'em.

That was my first thought.

Ain't nobody else in Hampton got the balls

to try to kill a Murdaugh, in my opinion.

- My first impression is probably still

my same opinion.

I just feel like whatever happened

was something within that family.

I don't think it was anything to do with anybody outside.

- If you could execute your wife and your son,

I would find that hard to believe.

And if you did, there's a special place in hell for you.

- I never would believe that he did it.

There's no way in the world.

There's no way.

- One of the pieces of evidence that's out there

is blood spatter on Alex.

- It's been reported that there was a spatter pattern

on Alex's shirt.

You know, you shoot somebody in the head

with a shotgun,

that's gonna be a massive explosion

of blood and tissue.

The same thing with the AR-15.

The bullets are traveling so fast,

a high-velocity mist is created

because it goes back in the direction

of the object that fired at them.

The closer I am to you when I shoot you,

it's gonna create more spatter back on that individual.

That's incredibly damning evidence

when you had to be the one that pulled the trigger.

- Which ties Alex right back to the scene

where both Paul and Maggie died.

- If that comes to be true,

that would just be one more nail in the coffin for Alex.

- You hear that, you know, he had some forensic evidence

that links him to the bodies.

Well, it's not surprising, 'cause he touched both bodies,

and he's going to have, you know, their blood on him.

The forensic testing of blood spatter

is accepted when you're looking at a crime scene

and there's blood on a wall, there's blood on a table,

there's blood on a hard surface.

But all that falls apart when it's blood in clothing.

I mean, it really is junk science and not accepted

in legitimate forensic scientific circles.

Unless there's something we don't know about,

that case will be as defensible

if not more defensible than Paul's boating case.

- This has been a three-year process.

It's been mystery and digging for information

and anything you can find about these murders.

And then to finally see it in writing...

Alex Murdaugh charged with two murders...

Was almost surprising in many forms,

because you never thought he was gonna get charged.

That's the first time anybody went, "Oh."

- We're breaking into programming right now

to bring you a special report.

- Alex Murdaugh has now officially been charged

with murdering his wife and son.

- SLED, the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division,

has informed the family

that they are seeking murder charges.

- The murder indictment alleges Murdaugh

shot his 52-year-old wife, Maggie Murdaugh, with a rifle

and his son Paul with a shotgun.

- Source has told CNN

that some of the evidence

that they believe law enforcement has

includes blood spatter on his clothing.

Okay, go. We're trying to get in the fucking jail.

Will you all get out of our way?

- Did you kill Paul and Maggie?

- I think I've worked maybe two in my whole career

where I've actually seen that,

and I've worked over 12,000 cases.

- The fact that Alex was charged

with both Maggie and Paul's murders

surprised a lot of people.

I think many people believe

that maybe he was involved somehow

or had somebody do it and would be connected that way.

But to see it specifically that Alex Murdaugh

killed Paul Murdaugh

and Alex Murdaugh killed Maggie Murdaugh

with a shotgun, with a rifle,

was almost shocking to see those words

come out specifically,

because I'm not sure if anybody believed

he truly pulled both triggers.

- He said simply he had nothing to do

with Maggie and Paul's murder.

- Murdaugh appeared in court with a shaved head,

wearing clothes from his defense attorney's son...

A white linen shirt, khaki pants, and Gucci shoes.

- Part of a long legal legacy, Alex Murdaugh will soon learn

his fate in a courtroom where a painting

of his great-grandfather hangs.

- For 13 months, has Alex's lawyers known

that he may have been involved in this and, like,

have been working to figure out how to fix this since then?

There's questions about who knows the truth,

what have they been doing to try to save Alex,

try to help him with all these crimes,

and what more don't we know about the situation?

- If I thought for one minute that Alex

had a hand in killing Maggie and Paul,

then yeah, I would be conflicted.

But I don't think that for a minute.

Not one minute.

- Everybody needs to know the truth

about every bit of it, everything.

I'm anxious to find out a lot of truth.

- Somebody knows what happened.

They need to come forward

for Mallory Beach's family,

Gloria Satterfield's family,

Stephen Smith's family.

Bring peace and closure

to the ones that's still living.

- Somebody threw him in the road

like a piece of trash.

And he wasn't trash. He was my son.

And I will fight until the end, till the day I die.

- A lot of people hollering,

and they want justice for Mallory.

Everybody says she didn't get it, but she got it.

There's a whole lot of people

getting justice because of her.

None of it would have ever been discovered

if it hadn't have been for that boat wreck.

- The Murdaugh name has been eroded,

and some would say that's a great tragedy.

But I suspect more would say it's about time.

- You'll never hear them say,

"We're happy about what happened."

But I think there's a sigh of relief for a lot of people,

because the Murdaughs won't be in charge anymore.

- Seems like they're enjoying

the pain that the Murdaugh family's going through.

I've talked to one person that said,

"Yeah, they getting what they deserve."

It burned me up,

'cause nobody deserves what has happened.

- Everything about this is tragic.

Everything.

For everybody.

You have to be held responsible for what you do.

But that doesn't mean that the unraveling of this family

is something to be celebrated.

- That's always gonna be our legacy.

This whole area is gonna be the poster child

for the actions of a few men.

- You go from being this high...

Got nothing to worry about,

everything in the world that you want...

You got the land,

you got the money, you got the power...

And then it just crumbled.

- What was once a bustling dynasty

is literally reduced to rubble

because of greed,

ego, power-tripping.

Olympus has fallen.

- Your time is up.