EXCLUSIVE: Alex Murdaugh Not Allowed To See His Lawyers Due to Covid Quarantine

Alex Murdaugh, the disgraced scion of the legal dynasty that controlled the workings of both the law and the law enforcement in South Carolina’s Lowcountry, is unable to talk to or meet with his attorneys because someone in the jail in which he’s being held has Covid-19.

Yesterday, Murdaugh attorney and former State Senator Dick Harpootlian reached out to Shane Kitchen, the assistant director at the Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center in Richland County, where Murdaugh is being held. Harpootlian asked if it would be possible to meet with Murdaugh at 2:30pm, but Kitchen replied via email, “The entire facility is in quarantine got [sic] Covid 19 at the moment.”

Jim Griffin, another lawyer for Murdaugh, said that the lawyers had “various things” they wanted to discuss with their client—unsurprising, given that Murdaugh is currently charged with committing 48 financial crimes that amount to a total of at least $6.2 million stolen money—but, as of now, it remains unclear when the quarantine restrictions will be lifted.

Among the topics for discussion, according to Griffin, are the “names of people who received checks from Curtis Eddie Smith.”

(Griffin is referring to the fact that court-appointed receivers now overseeing Murdaugh’s assets filed a report on January 7th noting that Murdaugh had transferred the vast majority of $2.25 million to alleged drug-dealer and alleged hit-man Curtis Edward Smith—a distant cousin who was also Murdaugh’s client—since February 28th 2019, four days after Alex’s son Paul drunk-drove a boat in an accident that resulted in the death of local teenager Mallory Beach. In their report, the receivers wrote, “We are investigating circumstances surrounding these transfers.”)

The detention center’s rules also mean that the lawyers are unable speak to Murdaugh, 53, by phone because he will have to remain in his cell to abide by quarantine restrictions, according to Griffin.

The quarantine could scarcely come at a worse time for Murdaugh, whose lawyers recently argued in vain for a reduction of his $7 million bond. Harpootlian claimed Murdaugh was unable to pay his phone bill, but that did not deter the judge from keeping Murdaugh put.

I’ve spent time this past fall in South Carolina, doing research for a documentary series and a podcast about the Murdaugh family. It is quite an astounding story. And I’ll get into all of that, but, first, a bit of background:

On June 7, 2021, Murdaugh’s wife Maggie, 52, and their youngest son, Paul, 22, were found dead (by Murdaugh) on a hunting estate near Moselle, approximately 12 miles from Hampton. They were reportedly brutally murdered with two different weapons. Paul was felled by a shotgun aimed at his chest; Maggie was shot by an automatic rifle, her neck nearly severed, according to someone who saw the police photographs.

At the time of their deaths, Murdaugh’s family was coming under financial pressure from a lawyer representing the family of Mallory Beach, a teenager who had drowned in a boat accident in 2019. The boat, which belonged to the Murdaugh family, had reportedly been driven by Paul Murdaugh, who, according to what other passengers told law enforcement, was drunk at the time. By 2021, Paul faced a pending criminal investigation and the Beach family was also suing for damages, but Murdaugh had been pushing back on revealing his finances.

A few months later, on September 4, Alex Murdaugh called 911 saying he’d been shot in the head. He later admitted he had paid Curtis Smith—his cousin, former client, and alleged drug-dealer—to shoot him, but that Smith had missed. (Smith said he’d missed deliberately, on Murdaugh’s instructions.) Remember, this is the same guy who received $2.25 million from Murdaugh, according to the receivers’ filings. Murdaugh said he’d wanted to die and have his remaining son Buster benefit from an insurance policy of $10 million. He also said he had a long-standing opioid dependency.

Murdaugh was arrested and charged with insurance fraud—but that wasn’t his only insurance fraud. It emerged he’d also stolen insurance money that was owed to the family of his former late housekeeper, Gloria Satterfield, who had died from injuries sustained from falling down the stairs at the Murdaugh home in 2018. Murdaugh had arranged for Satterfield’s sons to sue for insurance money which had never appeared.

After that revelation and ensuing litigation, the dominoes just kept on toppling.

SLED, the South Carolina state investigators, found something at the double murder scene that caused them to re-open the investigation into the death of a gay teenager Stephen Smith in 2015 who was found by the road just miles from one of the Murdaugh properties.

Next, reports emerged that Alex Murdaugh—and various of his close friends—had been swindling his clients and his partners since at least 2011, hiding money owed to the firm or to clients, which is why Murdaugh’s funds have been placed into receivership.

And Murdaugh is the only known person of interest in the murder investigation of his wife and son. Phew.

Murdaugh’s name may not have been nationally known until the events of this past summer, but he was well-known to South Carolinians as the son of Randolph Murdaugh III (who died of cancer just days after the deaths of Paul and Maggie), the patriarch of a legal dynasty which has essentially controlled the Lowcountry since 1910.

The story of how the Murdaugh family accumulated power over the last century is a remarkable demonstration of how the currency of the legal profession in the South is much different from, say, New York, where lawyers work for their clients—not the other way around.

Locals I’ve spent time with in Hampton, the county the Murdaughs come from, talk of how, for generations, the Murdaughs were revered because they held the position of solicitor—equivalent to a district attorney. The Murdaughs used that position to strongly influence the appointment of local judges and (unofficially) to run law enforcement and also, allegedly, rig local juries. Somehow they got around conflict rules and co-founded PMPED, the law firm which has made millions over the years from personal injury suits stemming from accidents—particularly those involving the local railroad transportation company, CSX, no matter how far from Hampton the accident occurred because a statute permitted it. In fact, CSX, the railroad carrier, made the law firm so much money that PMPED’s red brick headquarters is nicknamed “the CSX building.” (The CSX windfall stopped in 2005, when the law was reformed—and who knows how significant that was in causing the financial shenanigans that have been exposed recently.)

People told me how, since 1910, the Murdaugh family members acted as modern-day lords of the manor. For example, “Carrol,” a retired construction worker, told me he used to get invited to go hunting and golfing with the Murdaughs and that would be the highlight of the year. And a local law enforcement officer told me that Randolph Murdaugh III, whose photograph hangs over the bar at Harold’s Country Club, the popular local joint, frequently accompanied local law enforcement on raids because “he wanted to know absolutely everything that was going on.” (So, too, apparently did Randolph’s wife, Libby. In November 1975, an obituary of her was published in the State newspaper; three days later, the paper ran a correction, saying there had been a hoax. “Libby Murdaugh is alive and well,” they clarified. SLED was reportedly called in to investigate and nothing more was said about it; local lore suggests that Libby was wondering if her husband was having an affair and posted her own obituary in an effort to see who showed up the house.)

Loyalty to the family is such that when I was standing at the bar at Harold’s, a news chyron about the Murdaughs flashed on the TV overhead—and the channel was immediately switched to sports. (A Murdaugh relative owns the restaurant.)

Supporters aren’t the only ones turning somewhat of a blind eye to the severity of the charges Murdaugh faces. Even now, the signs are that Murdaugh is still in denial—or they were before the detention center went into quarantine. According to prosecutor Creighton Waters’s courtroom references to recordings of Murdaugh’s phone conversations from jail, Murdaugh reportedly told his son Buster to spend $5,000 on golf clothes and not to worry because “he has it worked out.” Says Waters, “It’s very clear he is telling relatives go ahead and spend money. ‘I’ve already worked it out, I’m going to pay you back.’”

But why is Murdaugh confident?

Last week, someone sent me photographs from yearbooks at Wade Hampton High School, which Murdaugh and his sibling attended in the 1980s. (See below.) They’ve not been widely published before, but you can see from the photographs just how popular and respected he was back in the day. He was not just an athlete but also someone who was voted “the best all around.” Perhaps the biggest surprise is that he was also voted the “wittiest.” Obviously there is nothing funny about his current predicament. The only time I’ve encountered Murdaugh was in Hampton County court, when he had tears streaming down his face as his lawyer Dick Harpootlian said “he has fallen from grace.”

That would be the least of it.

The question down South that nobody can answer is: How and why did Alex Murdaugh go from being the young man of promise depicted in these photos to the embezzler he’s reportedly been for over a decade?

The impression I get is that not even his lawyers have the full picture. And that there are far more twists and turns yet to play out in this story. Stand by…