The Murdaugh Trial and Conviction

Hinky doings in the Low Country

of South Carolina

As the news has been abuzz for the last several weeks with news of the trial and subsequent  conviction of Alex Murdaugh, something kept niggling in the back of my mind.  "I KNOW this case, it seems familiar, yet what I remember had nothing to do with a guy killing his wife and son."  Then, a factoid about the Murdaughs was mentioned on the CBS Sunday Morning show today, and the light bulb clicked on.

So I went back to the archives of The Grandstander to reread about my vacation in Hilton Head Island back in May, 2019.  Here is a portion of a Grandstander post from May 16, 2019:

While on vacation in Hilton Head Island last week, I made it a point each day to pick up a copy of the daily newspaper, The Island Packet - and, yes, I was amazed to see that tiny Hilton Head was publishing a daily newspaper.  Anyway, I found the paper to be fascinating reading.  It included stories like these....

• The case of John Terry Murdaugh.  Murdaugh is the 20 year old scion of an influential South Carolina legal family (judges, prosecutors, and high powered lawyers populate several generations of the family tree) who is charged with a BUI (Boating Under the Influence, a common crime in the SC Low Country) incident that resulted in the death of a teen age woman, and injuries to others on board the craft that young Murdaugh was piloting.  All passengers on  board were heavily imbibing and were under the legal age do so.  It seems that the entire booking, hearing, and indictment process were handled with so many kid gloves that charges of legal favoritism amongst the South Carolina "good old boy" network of justice are just flying left and right.  

For reasons that I can neither remember nor explain, the "John Terry Murdaugh" that I mentioned above and read about in 2019 is actually Paul Murdaugh, the son that, along with his mother, Alex Murdaugh was convicted of killing.  It was during the investigation of that boating accident, that the shady and illegal financial maneuverings of Alex Murdaugh began to unravel, leading up to his murduring his wife and son.

Nice to know that a piece of shit like Alex Murdaugh will be spending the rest of his life in the Crossbar Hotel.