Murdaugh Family History

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Jed Lipinski (1:05)

For the last 20 years, Valerie Bauerlein has covered the South for the Wall Street Journal. During that time, she's become well acquainted with the politicians and high-powered attorneys of South Carolina. Some of these folks would play starring roles in the high-profile trial of Alex Murdaugh, the mercurial Hampton County lawyer who, in 2023, was convicted of killing his wife and son and sentenced to life in prison.

SPEAKER_3 (1:32)

Good evening. There is breaking news from South Carolina tonight where the verdict is in, in the Alex Murdaugh double murder trial, the jury finding the once prominent attorney guilty on all counts in the shooting deaths of his wife and 22-year-old son at the family's property in 2021

Jed Lipinski (1:50)

Valerie's early reporting on the Murdaugs helped bring the story to national attention, but the Murdaugs had been making headlines in South Carolina for years. In 2019, Alex's son Paul drunkenly crashed his family's boat into a bridge near Paris Island, killing a young woman named Mallory Beach. The family was also suspected of killing their housekeeper, along with a young man named Stephen Smith, whose body was discovered on a desolate country road in 2015 When Alex was finally charged with murder, the nation's attention turned to the question of his guilt and what might have caused a prosperous South Carolina attorney to commit such an unthinkable act. Valerie covered Alex's trial. She would later chronicle the saga in the definitive book about the Murdaugs, Devil at His Elbow. But in the end, what captivated Valerie most wasn't Alex, who, like residents of South Carolina's low country, Valerie refers to as Alec. It was the 100-year-old legal dynasty that produced him. Specifically, the three deeply complicated men whose duplicity, cunning, and cruelty ensured the Murdaugh family's power was unquestioned for much of the 20th century. The story of these men tended to get buried in the headlines about Alex's schemes. But in Valerie's mind, it deserves to be better known.

Valerie Bauerlein (3:13)

As she puts it, Alec is the least interesting Murdaugh. He's the least interesting of all. It's crazy.

Jed Lipinski (3:21)

I'm Jed Lipinski. This is Gone South.

Valerie Bauerlein (3:28)

Well, I think from the beginning, it was clear to me that Hampton County is a major character in this story. You can't talk about the Murdaugh family without talking about the Petri dish that cultivated them, which is this place.

Jed Lipinski (3:42)

Hampton County sits in South Carolina's Low Country, roughly halfway between Savannah and Charleston. It's what's known as a burned county because General Sherman burned it to the ground during the Civil War. Sherman was furious with South Carolina soldiers, whom he believed had committed war crimes.

Valerie Bauerlein (4:01)

They are very poor soldiers and they had these crude pipe bombs that they would bury, particularly in the area that's now Hampton County. Yankee soldiers would march over them, fall in, and get blown up, and he considered that a war crime. So when Sherman crossed the Savannah River and came into what is now Hampton County, he was furious. And he came through in two flanks of 60,000 troops and burned everything in sight.

Jed Lipinski (4:26)

Sherman also tore up the railroads, Hampton County's economic lifeline, which further devastated the area. After the Civil War came Reconstruction, 12 turbulent years during which Black political power surged in South Carolina. The legislature flipped to a Black majority. But when federal troops withdrew in 1877, the state's biracial Republican coalition fell apart, and the Confederate Old Guard saw an opportunity.

Valerie Bauerlein (4:55)