A blistering exposé has revealed decades of secrets surrounding killer Alex Murdaugh’s family dynasty – including a diabolical threat once made by his father.
The disgraced lawyer is serving two life sentences for the murders of his wife and son – Maggie and Paul – as well as a consecutive sentence of 40 years in prison for stealing millions of dollars from clients.
He comes from a long line of corruption, scandal and men who abuse their power, an investigation by The Wall Street Journal found.
Alex’s father, Randolph Murdaugh III, was allegedly a ‘serial philanderer’ who cheated on his wife Libby Murdaugh.
When Libby discovered his infidelity and threatened to divorce, Randolph III reportedly called in her obituary to the largest paper in the state as a warning.
Libby died at the age of 85 in March, three years after the disgraced lawyer tried to use her as an alibi in the murders of his wife and son.
Randolph Murdaugh III’s father – Randolph ‘Buster’ Murdaugh Jr. – served as solicitor for the 14th Judicial Circuit, a large swath of South Carolina covering five counties, from 1940 to 1986.
During his tenure as solicitor, Buster was charged as the leader of the largest bootlegging ring in the South, according to The Journal.
Multiple witnesses testified that he pressured them to lie, but Buster was eventually acquitted.
When he returned to the solicitor’s office, he retaliated by charging the witnesses against him with state liquor law violations.
Similar to his son Randolph III, Buster was said to be a womanizer. Allegedly, Buster hired a hit man to take out a woman who said Buster got her pregnant. However, the would-be assassin fell asleep while hiding out.
A portrait of double murderer Alex Murdaugh’s grandfather, Buster, was removed from the South Carolina courtroom where his trial was held.
For more than a century, the Murdaugh family wielded immense power in the Lowcountry, with three generations of the family serving as elected solicitors, as district attorneys are there known, in the 14th Circuit from 1920 to 2006.
Randolph Murdaugh Sr., Alex’s great-grandfather and founder of the family law firm, died when his car mysteriously stopped on railroad tracks in 1940 and a train slammed into it. The death led to a payout benefiting Buster.
In the Netflix documentary ‘Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal,’ journalist Michael M. DeWitt Jr. revealed that according to the train conductor’s comments to the local paper at the time, Murdaugh Sr. was near the tracks and waved at the train as it was speeding toward him, then sped his car so that it was on the tracks at the time of impact. His body was found 150 feet away from the crossing.
Murdaugh Sr. had been battling an illness before he was killed but felt well enough to visit a friend on the evening of July 18, 1940. When he was driving home around 1 a.m., his car mysteriously stopped at a railroad crossing, according to DeWitt Jr. who cited Greenville News newspaper clippings from that time.
A freight train slammed into Murdaugh’s car, killing him instantly, it was reported. Another report by the Hampton County Guardian had that the train conductor stated Murdaugh Sr.’s car was near the crossing and that he waved at the train as it was speeding toward him. As the train got closer, the car sped up and ended up on the tracks as the train hit.
His death was ruled an accident despite speculation that it was alcohol-related or possibly a suicide.
The Murdaugh family sued the railroad company, Charleston & Western Carolina Railway Co., over the accident, it was reported.
The company was sued for $100,000, the Greenville News had reported. It was settled privately for undisclosed amount of money.
Four generations later, untimely deaths still surround the Murdaugh family, including that of Mallory Beach who was killed in a boat crash in 2019 with Paul Murdaugh at the wheel, Stephen Smith, a peer of the Murdaugh sons who was found dead on the side of the road in 2015, and the family housekeeper Gloria Satterfield.
In 2021, Alex Murdaugh gunned down his wife Maggie and his son Paul on their Moselle property.