Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign donor was charged with the double murder of his wife and son on their sprawling family farm last year.
On Thursday, a grand jury in Colleton County, South Carolina handed down an indictment to the now-disbarred attorney Alex Murdaugh for the 2021 murders of his wife and son.
Murdaugh, 54, had been suspected of killing his wife, 52-year-old Margaret, and their 22-year-old son Paul, who were found with bullet wounds on the family’s 1,700-acre estate.
Murdaugh contributed $2,800 (the maximum) to Biden’s campaign after his victory in the South Carolina primary, according to federal campaign records.
Maggie Murdaugh, the slain wife of disgraced South Carolina lawyer Alex Murdaugh, texted her friend shortly before she was murdered saying she suspected Alex was “up to something,” according to a law enforcement source cited by People magazine. https://t.co/W7GtDsRSKZ
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Here is a link to the indictments: https://t.co/zau0mz5mfQ
— Mandy Matney (@MandyMatney) July 14, 2022
According to The Washington Free Beacon reports, “Prosecutors allege that Murdaugh fatally shot his wife, Maggie, and son, Paul, in June 2021. Their deaths remained unsolved for more than a year as authorities investigated.”
Murdaugh, the scion of a prominent legal dynasty, was already facing a slew of other charges involving financial fraud, money laundering, and the illicit sale of oxycodone.
The lawyer was also charged in 2021 for enlisting his cousin, Curtis Edward Smith, to kill him in a botched murder-for-hire scheme designed to ensure that Murdaugh’s other son, Buster, would collect on the family life insurance policy. Murdaugh was wounded but not seriously hurt after Smith shot him on the side of the road.
The suspicious deaths of Murdaugh’s wife and son prompted police to reinvestigate several other mysterious deaths that occurred on or near his property between 2015 and 2018.
Though Murdaugh initially presented an alibi, he was never dropped by the police as a person of interest, and it has now been determined that blood spatters on his clothing may place him at the scene of the murder last year.
More details of this report from “People”:
According to several sources, Maggie and Alex had hit a rough patch in their marriage, and she was staying at the family’s beach house on Edisto Island, approximately an hour away from the family’s estate.
The law enforcement source tells PEOPLE that Maggie initially declined to meet Alex at the family home, suggesting instead that they meet at the hospital. Ultimately, she consented to meet at the property, planning to follow Alex to the hospital in her own vehicle.
On her way to the house, Maggie allegedly messaged a friend, saying that something about her husband’s behavior felt “fishy,” the law enforcement source says. “He’s up to something,” Maggie allegedly wrote to her friend.
When Maggie arrived at the scene, she left her car running and walked to the dog kennels on the estate where her son, Paul, was taking photos of a dog he was watching for a friend.
It’s unclear what happened next — but Maggie, 52, and Paul, 22 were gunned down close to the dog kennels. Paul’s body was found “half in and half out” of the dog kennels, authorities say.
Paul was shot in the chest and head with a shotgun at close range. Maggie was shot multiple times, including one shot in the back and additional shots while she was lying on the ground. She had been shot with 300 Blackout ammo from an AR-style rifle. Both of them were pronounced dead at the scene.
Authorities have not officially released who they believe the gunman was, but on Thursday they charged Alex Murdaugh, 54, with two counts of murder and two counts of possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime. He will be arraigned next week.
Murdaugh is currently imprisoned for a slate of other financial crimes pertaining to his now-destroyed legal practice, as well as a history of drug abuse, and an attempted staging of his own murder last year.
He is currently being held on a $7 million bond.
You can watch the video report here: NBCnews/Youtube
Sources: WLT, People, The Washington Free Beacon
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