Table Of Content
- Three bodies, 1,700 acres and hogs: Alex Murdaugh’s $4m Moselle estate
- year-old boy killed after wind gusts send bounce house airborne
- Murdaugh Family Murders and Evidence
- Alex Murdaugh Charged With Murder in 2021 Deaths of Wife, Son
- Todd Chrisley is ordered to pay Georgia investigator $755,000 in defamation lawsuit loss
- What about the defense?
The judge has called for the jury to enter the courtroom, where the verdict will be read. Jurors deliberated for just under three hours before reaching a verdict. Alex Murdaugh is charged with two counts of murder in the June 2021 killing of his wife and son. Before hearing closing arguments, the jurors in Alex Murdaugh’s murder trial made a rare visit to the crime scene, a secluded estate with a fishing pond, expansive farmland and a four-bedroom house shrouded by trees. Judge Clifton Newman said he would sentence Mr. Murdaugh on Friday morning.
Three bodies, 1,700 acres and hogs: Alex Murdaugh’s $4m Moselle estate
Murdaugh, Paul and Buster – as well as their friends – would spend a lot of time riding around the estate hunting deer, duck, quail, doves and hogs. Throughout the trial, jurors heard how the property’s 1,700 acres were a hunter’s paradise with dove fields, deer stands and duck ponds all over the estate. They saw a snapshot of the powerful and affluent Murdaugh family’s life given the $4m property was the place they called home for several years. The South Carolina Court of Appeals stayed Murdaugh's murder convictions and twin life sentences, putting the outcome of that case on hold until a lower court hears Murdaugh's request for a fresh trial. However, Murdaugh's defense team petitioned for a new trial in September, alleging Colleton County Clerk of Court Rebecca Hill of inappropriate communications with jurors, denying their client a fair trial. The lawyers contend Hill's communications may have helped remove jurors sympathetic Murdaugh and swayed others.
year-old boy killed after wind gusts send bounce house airborne
The proceeds of the sale will go to the Murdaugh family's surviving son, Buster, and victims of a 2019 boat crash involving Paul, the Greenville News reported, citing a settlement approved in January by a South Carolina judge. The 1,700 acres family estate was purchased by James A. Ayer and Jeffrey L. Godley in March, according to the Greenville News, part of the USA TODAY Network. The proceeds of the sale were divided between several parties including the Murdaugh family's surviving son, Buster, Murdaugh's younger brother John Marvin Murdaugh, and victims of a 2019 boat crash involving Paul, among others. Murdaugh is already jailed and faces dozens of criminal charges that have piled up in the months since his wife Maggie, 52, and their 22-year-old son, Paul, were killed. But until now he had not been charged in connection with his wife and son's deaths.
Murdaugh Family Murders and Evidence
Alex Murdaugh's Moselle Estate On the Market Again for $1.95 Million - PEOPLE
Alex Murdaugh's Moselle Estate On the Market Again for $1.95 Million.
Posted: Wed, 18 Oct 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]
That came after a video emerged showing that he had indeed been present at some point when his wife and son were out checking on the dogs. Alex Murdaugh told investigators early in the case that he was not down by the kennels that night and had last seen his wife and son at dinner before finding bodies upon returning home from visiting his mother. Along with an array of financial misdeeds, Mr. Murdaugh testified that he had a longtime addiction to painkillers and a penchant for lying. The prosecution seized on that admission — of how readily, and easily, he had lied to the police, his family and friends — to persuade the jury that he was lying about not having killed his wife and son.
Alex Murdaugh Charged With Murder in 2021 Deaths of Wife, Son
It turned out, as Mr. Murdaugh admitted from a detox facility days later, that he had actually asked a distant cousin, Curtis Eddie Smith, to kill him. Mr. Murdaugh said he had wanted to frame his death as a murder so that his surviving son, Buster, could collect on his insurance policy. Mr. Murdaugh was disbarred last summer after being charged with multiple financial crimes including the theft, in total, of about $8.8 million.
J.P. King Co., an auctioneer based in Alabama, declined to reveal the name of the buyer but said they were from out of state and had business interests in South Carolina, various news outlets have reported. The Murdaugh family home, close to where Paul and Maggie Murdaugh were murdered, is under contract for $1 million and will be used as a horse farm. The Moselle estate, custom-built in 2011, includes top-of-the-line appliances, a billiards room and custom gun cabinets, according to the listing. While the crash survivors were still in the hospital, and Mallory still missing, Murdaugh is said to have attempted entry into each of the patients rooms. A hospital security guard also reported that he heard Alex say “she’s gone. The same, unfortunately, could not be said for Mallory – whose body would be located a week after going missing.
The brothers’ house was destroyed, and most of their belongings are gone. They told CNN the basement they would have sheltered in collapsed and was crushed by a tree. By the time Roger Slatten pulled into the driveway and ran inside, it was too late to find shelter. The brothers say they locked eyes before a tornado with winds of at least 136 miles per hour ripped them from the house.
What about the defense?
Newman said Tuesday that Murdaugh had the emptiest soul of anyone he had seen in his 23 years on the bench, with the exception of a man who was sentenced to death for killing an off-duty police officer and burning his body. Jinks went to Murdaugh after incurring hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills for a neck injury he sustained when someone rear-ended his car. Jinks paid the bills in advance, having been assured by Murdaugh that he would obtain a settlement to pay him back.
Parents set to be sentenced in 4-year-old Palmdale boy's death
The Murdaughs purchased the Moselle property around 2012, Buster Murdaugh, the defendant's surviving son, testified in February. Stephen Smith's body was found on July 8, 2015 "in the middle of a rural highway in Hampton County [a county in South Carolina]," according to journalist Will Folks, who was interviewed for the docuseries. Unfortunately, how Stephen died "remains a mystery to this day," according to People; his murder has never been solved. Here are the exact locations of both the double homicide and the boat crash.
Their bodies were found near the property's kennels, where the Murdaughs kept their hunting dogs. Before the jury in the trial of Alex Murdaugh goes to deliberations, they will be leaving the courtroom and taking a field trip more than 20 miles away to Moselle. They will visit the rural, 1,772-acre hunting estate in Islandton, S.C., that’s been under contract to be sold for almost $4 million, to see the location where Murdaugh is accused of killing his wife and son.
At the time, no one could’ve expect the picturesque rural property would be the scene of a gruesome double homicide. The property where the crimes took place was located in Islandton, SC, while Maggie’s current residence was located in Edisto Beach. The family home was built in 2011 and consists of four bedrooms and 3.5 baths, meaning it could “easily be converted into a weekend hunting lodge with the capability to sleep up to 15 people”, the listing reads. The property was first listed in February 2022 – eight months after Maggie and Paul’s murders and five months before Murdaugh was charged with them – under a new name of Cross Swamp Farm. One witness even told the court how he had killed around 1,000 hogs in his time in the area (though not just on the Murdaugh estate). Several witnesses testified that they roamed the property and caused a nuisance, and that the family – and their friends – would shoot them any chance they got.
“I did lie to them,” Murdaugh said when he took the stand in his own defense. He explained that he had been paranoid about law enforcement because he was addicted to opiates and had a bottle of pills in his pocket when he was questioned. In the South Carolina Lowcountry, old family names can carry significant weight. To some residents, the Murdaugh name had come to stand for a domination of the legal system so pervasive that people asked whether the family had the power to skew the trajectory of justice in its favor. When Ms. Proctor asked him who might have murdered his wife — Ms. Proctor’s only sister — and his son, Mr. Murdaugh offered a cryptic response, she said.
Before the Moselle estate sale was finalized, assets from the property—including furniture, home decor (including monogrammed pillows and hunting lodge-themed trinkets), and cars—were auctioned off in Pembroke, Georgia. An employee of the auction house told CBS News that a Yeti cup (which typically costs $35) sold for $400. Another sale included the sofa set on which Alex claimed he napped on the night of the murders, for $36,000, Court TV reported.
