Randy Murdaugh, the older brother of Alex Murdaugh, has spoken out for the first time since his younger brother was jailed for killing his wife and son.
Randy has spent the last 20 months trying to understand what happened on the night of June 7, 2021, when Alex Murdaugh’s wife Maggie, 52, and their son Paul, 22, were shot dead.
While Randy struggles to believe that his brother could have committed such a heinous crime, he also believes that Alex is not telling the truth about what happened. Randy did not testify in his brother’s trial.
Randy recalls that after Maggie and Paul were found dead, he found it strange that Alex did not call people to ask if they knew why the mother and son might have been targeted.
Randy spent considerable time calling people, but Alex never did. Despite Alex being sentenced to life in prison for the double murder, Randy still isn’t sure whether he thinks his brother carried out the killings.
Randy has been forced to question whether he knows his brother – ever since Maggie and Paul were murdered and since he found out that Alex was stealing from their law firm.
In October 2021, Randy filed a lawsuit against Alex, claiming that he owed him tens of thousands of dollars.
The suit revealed that just days before Alex attempted to stage his own murder in a bizarre roadside shooting so that his son Buster would get life insurance, he came to Randy and asked for a loan of $75,000.
Within days of that loan being made, Alex attempted to have himself shot so that his surviving son, Buster, could claim his $10million life insurance policy.
During his six-week trial, Alex admitted to stealing millions of dollars from the family firm and clients, saying he needed the money to fund his drug habit.
Before he was charged with murder, Alex was in jail awaiting trial on about 100 other charges ranging from insurance fraud to tax evasion. After sentencing, Alex returned to the Colleton County jail to gather his possessions.
Through more than 75 witnesses and nearly 800 pieces of evidence, jurors heard about betrayed friends and clients and Alex’s failed attempt to stage his own death in an insurance fraud scheme.
Other scandals discussed in the trial include a 2019 boat crash involving his late son Paul which killed 19-year-old Mallory Beach. The girl’s family were suing Alex for a reported $30m at the time of Paul and Maggie’s murders.
The death of his housekeeper Gloria Satterfield, who the Murdaugh family claimed tripped over the dogs and fell down the stairs while working at their hunting lodge, was also raised during the case.
Her son Tony called to give testimony on the stand about the $4 million wrongful death payout Alex allegedly stole.
Meanwhile, prosecutors didn’t have the weapons used to kill Paul and Maggie or other direct evidence like confessions or blood spatter.
But they had a mountain of circumstantial evidence, including the video putting Alex at the scene of the killings five minutes before his wife and son stopped using their cellphones forever.
Alex faces spending the rest of his life in a prison cell, a far cry from the privileged world of multi-million dollar homes from the coast to the hunting lands of the Lowcountry to which he has grown accustomed in his 54 years.