Alex Murdaugh's Brother Thinks There's More to the Story Than Alex Is Sharing
Content warning: This article contains references to murder some may find upsetting. Reader discretion is advised.
Last week, former South Carolina lawyer Alex Murdaugh was found guilty of the murders of his wife and son, Maggie and Paul, and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. (The death penalty was never on the table for this case, even though South Carolina is technically a death penalty state. The last execution took place in 2011.)
True crime fans far and wide — and those just generally curious about the truly baffling series of events that went down from 2015 to 2021 — tuned into both the double homicide trial, as well as the three-part Netflix docuseries, appropriately called Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal, to get all the facts of this bizarre case.
Now, another Murdaugh family member is making the news: Alex's older brother, Randy Murdaugh.
In a new interview with The New York Times, Randy is still processing what happened to his family: first with the deaths of his sister-in-law and nephew, and now with his younger brother who's been convicted for their murders. From the time they were born until Alex's world started unraveling, Randy and Alex were seemingly on the same path; both brothers went to law school and later became partners at their family's law firm that was founded by their great-grandfather.
As the Times reported, "Randy Murdaugh said he had no doubt that his brother was a serial liar and a thief. He said he also believed that Alex had not told the whole truth about what he knew about the killings."
However, Randy is still unsure if Alex actually carried out the murders himself. "He knows more than what he's saying,” Randy told the outlet. "He's not telling the truth, in my opinion, about everything there." Randy was not called to testify during the trial, like John Marvin Murdaugh and Buster Murdaugh, Alex's younger brother and surviving son, were.
Although there was a verdict in this horrifying case and not a hung jury, Randy and the rest of the surviving Murdaugh family are still grappling with "the not knowing," described by Randy as "the worst thing there is."
Stephen Smith's mother, Sandy, and his family and friends presumably feel the same way about Stephen's mysterious death in 2015 that's been loosely linked to the Murdaugh family, mostly through Buster Murdaugh. Per People, how the 19-year-old died "remains a mystery to this day."
Moreover, longtime Murdaugh family housekeeper Gloria Satterfield's loved ones are also wrestling with the not knowing. The 57-year-old mother of two supposedly tripped over the Murdaughs' dogs and fell on the stairs, later dying from her injuries in 2018. In June 2022, WJCL reported her body would be exhumed, but no further information about it, or if anything new was discovered about her death, has been released to the public as of this writing.
Despite the end of the double murder trial, there are still plenty of unanswered questions left for the survivors. For Randy, that includes asking himself if he ever truly knew his brother. He learned a few months after Maggie and Paul were murdered that Alex had allegedly been stealing from the law firm to support his drug addiction to painkillers, an addiction that was brought up during the trial.
According to the Times, Randy and another partner confronted Alex about the embezzlement. Between that and Alex's botched attempted suicide that Alex originally said was an attack by an unknown assailant, Randy "came to see his brother as a deeply flawed man and a liar. They have not spoken in nearly a year."
We may never fully know everything that happened during the Murdaugh murders — or the boat crash that killed 19-year-old Mallory Beach and is connected to the late Paul Murdaugh, how Stephen Smith died, or Gloria's true cause of death. But for Randy, all he can do is continue to live his life, raising his two daughters, and working in his family's law firm, even taking on clients his brother used to represent.
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