The Murdaugh Murders - to believe Alex didn't shoot his wife and son?

[XelaM]

The trial is currently ongoing in the US and has been the subject of a Netflix documentary The Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal.

It's almost unbelievable this case is real and not some movie script for a tragic thriller. It involves the very powerful Murdaugh family- a dynasty of many generations of prosecutors/lawyers who had almost unlimited power and money. They appeared to be above the law. The father was Alex (the heir to the dynasty) and he was married to Maggie with whom he had two sons- Buster and Paul. The younger son Paul appeared to be as appalling a human being as his father (at least according to the documentary).

Five people are dead who were connected to this family:

*Mallory Beach - a young teenage girl who was on a boat that the younger Murdaugh son (Paul) crashed at night being drunk out of his mind. His father Alex tried to initially claim that someone else was driving the boat but then did absolutely everything to make this case "go away" even after Paul had been charged. Paul never faced any consequences for Mallory's death. Her family were pursuing a civil suit.

*Stephen - the elder son's (Buster's) friend who was found dead in the middle of a road in very odd and suspicious circumstances. No one ever faced any consequences for his death.

*Gloria - the Murdaugh housekeeper who allegedly fell down the stairs at their property. Alex collected a $4.3 million insurance payout for her death (on a policy he had taken out a month earlier) and never paid it to her family.

*And now the younger son Paul and his mother (Alex's wife) Maggie were found shot dead on their property with two different firearms.

Alex has been charged with the murders of his son and wife (in addition to having been found to have embezzled huge funds from his law firm and his clients).

But I just don't understand how someone who was so concerned with protecting the family dynasty and whitewashing his son of any responsibility for Mallory's death- why would he shoot the same son two years later? The motive that the prosecution put forward was that he tried to gain sympathy when he was being prosecuted for embezzlement and trying to delay Mallory's family's civil suit. I just don't understand that this is a strong enough motivation for shooting his son?

There's definitely something weird going on - did the man who worked for SLED not say that he'd done the maths and worked out that Alex had spent enough for a 114 year supply of opioids (based on the intake of a heavy user). There were also early hints towards drug smuggling I thought - when they were talking about the airstrip.

Definitely one way for a family to maintain a stranglehold in a small town, while maintaining a public facade of respectability with the law firm.

I doubt that Buster will end up with much. If I remember right it is alleged that he had loaned his ID to Paul so that he could buy alcohol which ended in tragedy. The family of the girl who died have sued for millions.

I was reading on websleuths what sounds like complicated trusts set ups. I don't think the money is technically ever going to be his but he has full access to whatever is in the untouchable trust

So apparently Moselle has been sold and Buster is getting 500,000 dollars. The rest of the estate inc insurance payouts is being split between plaintiffs, one of which is Busters uncle who will get 12million.

Moselle has been sold? Urgh that is the very last place I would like to live after those hideous murders.

The worst bit of the testimony for me was when a forensic explained how Maggie had witnessed her son being murdered and then had fled and was shot on her back on her knees when she died.

I don't believe Alex was a drug addict at all, I think other things will come out about the financial irregularities. I think he killed them out of a burning rage. He was furious with Paul because the boat accident was what had led to Alex's finances being investigated in the first place. And furious with Maggie bc she was about to leave him.

I thought the judge was extraordinarily compassionate in his summing up given the circumstances.

It's such a mystery where all the money has gone. I don't think he was diverting it into trusts, that doesn't make sense - the urgent pattern of stealing and the general desperation around his behavior suggests something else, gambling or similar? The pills were undoubtedly an issue, but they don't explain the vast sums involved.

If the stolen money was just accumulating in an off-shore trust, Alex would surely have withdrawn it and paid everyone back when he realised he was being investigated? But if he was gambling, surely evidence would have come out about that?

The financial issues still need to be unscrambled.

I think there are two possible motives for killing Paul:

1. To implicate the Beach family/Mallory’s boyfriend or friends as a decoy, allowing Alex to get away with the murder of his wife (his primary target). Not very well thought through perhaps, but he was drug addled and had previously got away with all sorts of crimes that he shouldn’t have so he would be entirely hubristic in his thinking.
2. Family annihilation. Alex’s financial crimes were coming to light and he assumes his world is unravelling. Paul is still the ‘dependent child’ so to speak - living at home, about to go on trial. If Alex can no longer protect him, what’s the point? Buster is presumably more independent at this point. I think this one is less likely as family annihilators usually take their own lives too.

That’s interesting Mangosteensoda I hadn’t thought about implicating the Beach family.

What a hideous man. He must have no conscience at all.

Sorry, I meant as a reason for Paul’s murder specifically. How terrible.

Of all the people in the world to doubt their guilt, this pos should be at the very bottom. What is it about this white wealthy corrupt racist that make his guilt so hard to believe?

I agree with you and thought the same in my post.
This is all about the money.

I think the upcoming financial crime trial will reveal a whole lot more than this murder trial.

In this murder trial he stuck with the shaggy defence "it wasn't me".
But I think its going to be far harder to do that in the fraud/embezzlement trial.

Money doesn't lie. Hiding/lying about his crimes won't be as easy when it comes to the money.

(That being said, the jury didn't buy his lies when it came to the murders.)

1. Fraud on this scale doesn't isn't committed by one not-very-clever man, over a short period of time.
2. This is a generations-long dynasty, with fingers in every single law enforcement pie in the county.
3. Paul's and Buster's entitlement, at such a young age, was so well known and so off the charts as to have to be rooted in a something immense.
4. Unless you're familiar with it, it's difficult to describe the sort of community the Murdaughs operated in. They were very big fish in a teeny tiny little pond, and Alex Murdaugh was a toxic combination of stupid and arrogant.

The trial of the financial crimes is going to reveal much worse things, I think. This isn't the end of it. All the Murdaughs are involved: Buster, Alex, Alex's father and uncles, their father, Maggie. There will have been pay-off and backhanders through the police department, throughout the judicial offices of Hampton County. For YEARS. Everyone knows, nobody has said anything yet. Mallory's family, Gloria's family, Stephen's family (and whichever other unresolved murders are going to be attributed to this family) are boosted by the huge publicity this case has had.