Alex Murdaugh, the South Carolina legal scion buried in a pile of legal trouble from mysterious deaths to missing money, was extradited home Saturday from Florida, where he had been in drug rehab.
Murdaugh was booked into the Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center, where he stands charged with two felony counts of obtaining property under false pretense.
Prosecutors allege Murdaugh stole more than $3 million of an insurance payout that was supposed to go to the sons of his family’s longtime housekeeper, who died after falling on their property in 2018.
Of the $4 million in settlements won by attorney Cory Fleming, hired by Gloria Satterfield’s sons at Murdaugh’s suggestion, about half was supposed to go to the sons. Instead, about $3 million in checks was written to an account called “Forge,” owned by Murdaugh, according to the South Carolina State Law Enforcement Division.
Murdaugh “coordinated with Ms. Satterfield’s family to sue himself in order to seek an insurance settlement with the stated intent to give the proceeds to the Satterfield family to pay for funeral expenses and monetary compensation for Satterfield’s children,” according to an arrest affidavit released Saturday.
The sons claim they never saw a cent of the money.
Murdaugh also faces a lawsuit from Satterfield’s sons, who claim, among other allegations, that Murdaugh never told them that Fleming, the lawyer he suggested, was his old college friend and the godfather to his son.
Add that to the list of Murdaugh’s alleged crimes, including the botched assisted suicide and embezzlement from his own law firm. He’s also been sued by a passenger of a boat piloted by his son, Paul, in 2019 when he crashed, killing 19-year-old Mallory Beach.
Last week, Murdaugh’s lawyer, Jim Griffin, said Murdaugh is a person of interest in the deaths of his wife, Maggie, and younger son, Paul, who were found dead in June.
“He had no motive to kill them,” Griffin told Fox Carolina.
“You would think that if Alex was the one who did it, that SLED would have been able to establish that pretty easily that night,” Griffin said. “You would think they would have searched his house and found blood somewhere. You would think they would have found the murder weapons on the property. You would think they would come up with something to link Alex to the murders, forensically or independent evidence. To my knowledge, they have not done that.”
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