Low Country: The Murdaugh Dynasty · Crime-wave rhetoric
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The crime
South Carolina attorney Alex Murdaugh currently faces murder charges in the 2021 shotgun deaths of his (estranged?) wife Maggie and younger son Paul, who himself was entangled in proceedings surrounding a felony boating DUI.
Murdaugh also faces dozens and dozens of insurance-fraud and theft charges — basically, he stole clients’ settlement money, a series of decisions he blames on an opioid addiction.
Murdaugh himself got shot in the head in the middle of last year, but survived to call 9-1-1, although it soon became clear he had hired someone to shoot him — Murdaugh claimed it was an attempt to arrange his own suicide so that his older son, Buster, would be eligible for an insurance payout of his own. Majority opinion seems to hold that the shooting, which is probably what really landed this Gordian knot of bonkers in national crime headlines, was in fact an attempt to gain sympathy and buy time for Alex.