Former influential South Carolina lawyer Alex Murdaugh received life prison sentences Friday for murdering his wife and 22-year-old son.
Alex Murdaugh was convicted Thursday of killing 55-year-old Maggie and Paul, 22, in a June 2021 incident outside their Islandton, South Carolina family home. He vocally maintained his innocence at the Friday sentencing hearing, claiming he would never hurt his wife and son.
“This has been perhaps one of the most troubling cases, not just for me as a judge, for the state, the defense team, but for all of the citizens in this community, all of the citizens in this state and as we have seen, based on the media coverage, throughout the nation,” Judge Clifton Newman said.
Murdaugh called 911 to report that they had been badly hurt but has denied killing them himself, admitting in trial testimony that he had lied about his location minutes before the murders after a video recording from Paul indicated he had been at the scene of the crime at the time. (RELATED: Dem Mayor May Be Recalled As Murder Rate Soars, Trash Floods Streets)
Murdaugh’s attorneys claimed he lied due to being in “in the throes of addiction,” according to CNN. He was arrested in September 2021 and charged for a purported fraud scheme, in which Murdaugh allegedly hired former client Curtis Edward Smith to kill him so Murdaugh’s living son Buster could receive a multi-million-dollar insurance payout.
“Certainly the verdict that you’ve reached is supported by the evidence,” Newman told the jury Thursday. “I applaud you all for, as a group, and as a unit and individually, evaluating the evidence and coming to a proper conclusion as you saw the law, as you saw the facts.”
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