Maggie & Paul Murdaugh

Case background and investigation

Margaret "Maggie" Murdaugh, 52, and her son Paul Murdaugh, 22, were shot and killed on the evening of June 7, 2021, near the dog kennels on the family's hunting property in Islandton, in rural Colleton County, South Carolina. According to Wikipedia's account of the case, Maggie's husband, attorney Alex Murdaugh, called 911 at 10:06 p.m. and reported finding the two bodies. Trial evidence indicated that Maggie Murdaugh had been shot with a rifle and Paul Murdaugh with a shotgun.

Alex Murdaugh was indicted on two counts of murder in July 2022. His trial began on January 25, 2023, at the Colleton County Courthouse in Walterboro before Judge Clifton Newman. A central piece of evidence was a video recorded on Paul Murdaugh's phone at the kennels at 8:44 p.m., on which witnesses identified Alex Murdaugh's voice. He had told investigators he was not at the kennels that evening. Testifying in his own defense on February 23, 2023, he admitted he had lied about that and said he was the person heard on the recording, but denied killing his wife and son.

Prosecutors argued, NBC News reported, that Murdaugh committed the killings to win sympathy and draw attention away from financial wrongdoing that was about to be exposed. On March 2, 2023, after less than three hours of deliberation, the jury found him guilty of two counts of murder and two weapons counts. He was sentenced the next day to two consecutive life terms.

Murdaugh's lawyers later alleged that the Colleton County clerk of court, Becky Hill, had made improper comments to jurors during the trial. A motion for a new trial was denied on January 29, 2024. NBC News reported that Hill pleaded guilty in 2025 to criminal charges that included showing sealed exhibits to a photographer and lying about it in court, and that she received probation.

On May 13, 2026, the South Carolina Supreme Court unanimously overturned both murder convictions and ordered a new trial. According to NBC News, the court found that Hill had improperly influenced jurors, including by suggesting that they could not trust Murdaugh's testimony. The state attorney general said his office would seek to retry the case as soon as possible.

ABC News reported that Judge Debra McCaslin set the retrial for April 5, 2027, and, in an order dated September 8, 2026, moved it to Sumter County, about 80 miles from Walterboro, after concluding that Murdaugh could not receive a fair trial in Colleton County. Murdaugh continues to deny the killings and is presumed innocent of them pending retrial. He remains in prison on separate matters: he pleaded guilty to financial crimes involving theft from clients and is serving a 27-year state sentence and a concurrent 40-year federal sentence.