Let Me Say This With As Much Sensitivity As I Can: Wow, That's a Lot of Dead People and Crime

[Nevilledog]

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Ben Mathis-Lilley
@BenMathisLilley
I am an Incredibly Bizarre and Almost Implausibly Gothic South Carolina Murders and Deaths person now. DM for my theories.

Let Me Say This With As Much Sensitivity As I Can: Wow, That’s a Lot of Dead People and Crime
The Murdaugh family crime saga in South Carolina continues to get weirder and weirder and weirder and weirder and weirder. Really, it's wild.
slate.com
9:39 AM · Sep 16, 2021

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/09/alex-murdaugh-investigations-explained-south-carolina-murder-fraud-obstruction-of-justice-maybe-more.html

On Wednesday, the New York Times and Today show covered the subject of Alex Murdaugh, a 53-year-old South Carolina lawyer at the center of an astounding web of criminal activity and suspected criminal activity, much of it fatal. The most recent development in the story is that police say Murdaugh admitted to asking a former legal client to kill him so that his son Buster Murdaugh could receive a $10 million life insurance payout. (Update: There have been even more recent developments since I began writing this post. They’re at the end.) The former legal client apparently did follow through with the attempt, but Murdaugh somehow only suffered a glancing wound. To really understand what’s happening, though, you have to go back somewhere between six and 111 years. Let’s unpack this.

A hundred and eleven years?

Yes. In 1910—so long ago that true crime podcasts had not yet been invented—Alex Murdaugh’s great-grandfather became “solicitor,” or prosecutor, for South Carolina’s 14th Judicial Circuit, which covers five counties in the state’s southeastern corner. That’s the so-called low country that includes well-known leisure destinations like Hilton Head. Alex Murdaugh’s grandfather and father also served as solicitor, making for an 86-year stretch, ending in 2006, in which the family ran the office. Alex Murdaugh’s great-grandfather also founded a still-extant private law firm in which Alex Murdaugh was until recently a partner. The firm specializes in personal and vehicular injury cases. Alex Murdaugh had also worked part time at the prosecutor’s office his father once led.

So they were prosecutors, but also personal injury lawyers?

Yes!

Wouldn’t that present potential conflicts of interest and generally create a situation in which everyone in a five-county radius was either indebted to, allied with, or subject to prosecution by one family?

That’s right. In fact, that’s where the 2015 part of the story starts. On July 8, 2015, the body of a 19-year-old named Stephen Smith was found with a fatal head wound on a road in Hampton County, South Carolina, which is part of the jurisdiction that had been run by the Murdaughs until 2006 and is where their law firm is based. Smith was gay, and his mother has said she suspects her son was, according to a local 2015 news article, killed in a hate crime “by several local Hampton County youths from prestigious families.” State highway police files include research into rumors that Alex Murdaugh’s son Buster was part of a group that may have killed Smith, and the files suggest investigators were worried that the Murdaughs’ prominence in the area was making individuals who may have had relevant information reluctant to talk. But they were unable to find solid evidence that Smith was killed in an attack committed by now–25-year-old Buster Murdaugh or anyone else, and no arrests have been made in the case … yet. (More to come!)

*snip*

[FakeNoose]

1. Wow this is sure to become a TV mini-series

... or maybe a full theatrical movie.

[XanaDUer2]

2. I look forward to the Dateline episode nt

[Ocelot II]

3. This saga is certain to become a tv miniseries.

[Dream Girl]

4. This has Netflix written all over it.

Add this to their murder show lineup.

[exboyfil]

5. So lets say

Buster and his buddies kill Smith
The housekeeper is killed because she found out
The mother and Paul were killed because they were going to deal Buster for Paul's vehicular manslaughter
Is Buster Alex's favorite son and Paul is Maggie's?

[GoodRaisin]

6. "The House of Murdaugh"

sounds like Hill House.

[Tomconroy]

7. The butler did it!