Alex Murdaugh, scion of powerful legal dynasty, shot in head
Alex Murdaugh (far right) Alex Murdaugh, the scion of a powerful South Carolina legal dynasty, whose wife and younger son were murdered in June, was shot on a rural road while on his way to Charleston Saturday, his lawyer and police said.
Murdaugh, 53, was shot on Old Salkehatchie Road in Hampton County, a spokesman for SLED, South Carolina Law Enforcement, told The Post. He is expected to survive, his family said.
Murdaugh was shot in the head, police sources told WCBD-TV in South Carolina. SLED spokesman Tommy Crosby said he did not have specific details about Murdaugh’s injuries.
Alex Murdaugh had car trouble during his trip and stopped to change a tire, his lawyer, Jim Griffin, told local media.
Griffin said shots were fired from a truck that had passed Murdaugh on the road and circled back as he was working on his car. Griffin told the Island Packet he’d spoken with another Murdaugh family member about the incident.
The shocking new shooting lent an even more Southern Gothic horror feel to the still-unsolved double murder of Alex Murdaugh’s wife, Maggie, and son, Paul, at their hunting lodge outside Hampton, SC, on June 7. The once-untouchable Murdaugh family, many say, has a lot of enemies.
“There’s a long list of people they rubbed the wrong way, that’s for sure,” one source in Hampton, SC, who knows the family, told The Post.
Several Hampton County sources familiar with the investigation told
The Post the route Murdaugh was reportedly taking to Charleston was a
longer one than most drivers going to Charleston would use.
Alex Murdaugh called his brother, Randy, to report the shooting around 2:15 p.m., Griffin told the Post and Courier.
(L-R) Buster, Maggie, Paul and Alex MurdaughGriffin said that Murdaugh was airlifted to the Medical University of South Carolina Hospital where he is being treated. Randy Murdaugh cannot enter the hospital because of COVID-19 restrictions but has been able to talk to Alex on the phone which is an “encouraging sign,” Griffin told the outlet.
“The Murdaugh family has suffered through more than any one family could ever imagine. We expect Alex to recover and ask for your privacy while he recovers,” a family spokeswoman told The Post.
The spokeswoman declined to answer any questions about the incident.
Alex Murdaugh and his family were the subject of sensational headlines when his wife, Maggie, 52, was shot to death near the dog kennels on the grounds of the family’s hunting lodge. Also gunned down was her and Alex’s troubled 22-year-old son, Paul.
Alex found the bodies at the lodge, called “Moselle,” around 10 p.m. The victims were shot multiple times, the coroner said, reportedly with a semi-automatic assault rifle and a shotgun. He ruled the deaths a double homicide.
Cops reportedly said early on that Alex was a “person of interest” in the investigation of his wife and son’s deaths, but now say he was not. The family has claimed he has a rock-solid alibi: He was visiting his dying father in the hospital at the time of the killings.
Two weeks after the murder, the Murdaugh family offered a $100,000 reward for information leading to an arrest in the double homicide of the mother and son.
Alex and Maggie Murdaugh were for a time the leading lights in otherwise mostly poor Hampton County, holding forth from one of their three estates in the area.
For years, the Murdaugh family ran the prosecutor’s offices in the five counties that make up the Lowcountry while also, incredibly, operating a powerhouse litigation firm, Peters, Murdaugh, Parker, Eltzroth & Detrick, with tentacles in the highest echelons of the red state — despite being Democrats.
Their two sons, Buster and Paul, liked to shoot wild animals and spent time on the family’s 17-foot powerboat in the summer..
At the time of his death, Paul was facing trial on felony boat-driving charges in connection with a crash that killed a 19-year-old woman in 2019.
Around the rural towns of Hampton and nearby Walterboro, where the Murdaughs are both liked and feared, there’s no end to the rumors of whodunit — and a long list of potential enemies, from former employees to people they helped prosecute or sue.
Many people have been afraid to talk publicly about the June murders for fear they could be considered suspects acting out of revenge.
Two different weapons were used in the wife and son's murder. That points to two suspects. Two people can't keep a secret unless one is dead.
ReplyDeleteWhat, is he the only rich White guy in SC who doesn't carry a gun? Or did his recent legal troubles preclude that?
ReplyDelete