Murdaugh murder books open new windows into SC’s most notorious crime saga

It has been said that Alex Murdaugh — convicted killer of his wife and son, thief extraordinaire and betrayer of an iconic if flawed South Carolina legal dynasty — cannot be understood without knowing from whence he came.

With that in mind, authors Michael DeWitt and Jason Ryan with their new and well-researched books have set about opening new windows into Murdaugh’s family past, his home county of Hampton’s dark history, and how the disgraced lawyer and his ancestors grew up and thrived in that environment.

Their books are likely at the front of a parade of books that will appear in coming years about a saga that is so sprawling in time, so complex in its cast of characters and its depravity, that only books can do it justice, covering more ground and connecting more dots than any newspaper, podcast or documentary.

One author, Michael DeWitt, editor of Murdaugh’s home town newspaper, The Hampton Guardian, published the 181-page “The Fall of the House of Murdaugh” in December. Earlier last year, he published “Wicked Hampton,” which is 157 pages.

“My family has called this place (Hampton) home for more than 300 years....Through my arteries ebb the spirits of the saintliest of southerners, muddled with the blood of generations of lawless scoundrels,” DeWitt writes in “Wicked Hampton.”

Together, DeWitt’s two books serve as essential basic reading for those wanting a deeper dive that weaves together the Murdaugh saga’s numerous threads into a tapestry. “Fall” also has a Murdaugh dynasty timeline dating back to April 1865, when Murdaugh ancestor J.P. Murdaugh II, a soldier in Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee’s army, surrendered at Appomattox.

The other author, Charleston writer Jason Ryan, will publish “Swamp Kings,” at 448 pages, on April 2.

Ryan, quoting Murdaugh murder trial Judge Clifton Newman, observes that “the truth in these cases proves too painful, too ugly, for any person to admit.”

Both Ryan’s and DeWitt’s books cover well-known aspects in the Murdaugh tale, such as his murder trial, evidence used against him there, his $10 million-plus in financial crimes and three generations of Murdaughs who held the solicitor’s post for a total of nearly 90 years in the five-county 14th Judicial Circuit.

Ryan’s new details include child molestation and cat-killing allegations against a now-deceased Murdaugh, ex-paratrooper Johnny Glenn Murdaugh, by a still-living and named Hampton County resident, new accounts of underhanded dealings by Alex Murdaugh’s male ancestors and fleshed-out accounts of tragic events associated with the Murdaughs. Johnny Glenn Murdaugh, who died in 1987 at the age of 68, was the brother of Alex Murdaugh’s grandfather, or Alex’s great uncle.

One example of what Ryan shone more light on is the violent death of Randolph Murdaugh Sr., the first Murdaugh solicitor, who was killed in 1940 at the age of 53 after his car stalled one night on railroad tracks outside Hampton. Circumstances of that death have been widely reported and are included in DeWitt’s book.

But Ryan uses testimony culled from a July 19, 1940, Hampton County coroner’s inquest to show that it may have been suicide, and that Murdaugh Sr., sitting behind the car’s steering wheel, was laughing as the train bore down on him.

Ryan also employs novelistic techniques to tell the Murdaugh story, using details from documents and interviews to set scenes and flipping from present to past in the dynasty’s 100-plus year history and the role its members played in seeking justice and working deals. Much of Ryan’s tale reads like a novel, but is grounded in fact. He includes photos, 30 pages of end notes showing direct sources and a map of the 14th Judicial Circuit.

“Swamp Kings” begins, “The train rolled into Hampton County just after midnight, barreling along tracks that cut through riotous overgrown countryside. Three men toiled aboard the train’s locomotive, fueling its firebox and finessing its controls. The next station — Varnville — was at least four miles away, down a straightaway. There was no reason to slow down. A full moon hung in a clear sky.”

The train crew watches in horror as a car in front of them stalls on the railroad tracks. “As the speeding train loomed closer and closer, the man kept waving through the car window. He was laughing,” Ryan wrote.

DeWitt’s book “Fall” is not as detailed in places as Ryan’s, but it’s still immensely readable and informative, a straightforward tale of numerous episodes in the Murdaugh saga which, as the author says, chronicle “the steady rise of a prominent Southern family and the cold-blooded murders that brought it down.... It is a tragedy with no main hero, a drama yet to completely unfold, and a narrative sure to captivate all who care to read it.”

DeWitt’s reason for writing a Murdaugh book

DeWitt, 51, who was born and raised in Hampton County, didn’t plan on writing a Murdaugh book.

But when the murders (of Paul and Maggie Murdaugh) happened, and the story became international, people began telling DeWitt he needed to be the one to tell the story because “nobody can tell our story here in the Lowcountry like one of us,” DeWitt told The State.

“So, I was convinced to tell my community’s story, and do it as accurately as possible.”

In 2015, DeWitt had published a history of Hampton County that was full of largely positive events.

“In the process of gathering stuff for that book, I found all these dark and disturbing stories about my hometown, and I put them in a folder for a rainy day,” he said.

After Paul and Maggie were murdered, DeWitt had his rainy day.

Over the course of the next two years, he put his old material about Hampton’s lynchings, Klan marches, hog rustling and other ignoble acts into “Wicked Hampton,” published May 29 by Arcadia Press.

Other than the six weeks of the Murdaugh murder trial, which ended in early March 2023, DeWitt wrote for the Gannett newspaper company during the day, while at night “staying up late, working on the books... It was 18 hours a day for 18 months,” said DeWitt, who now leads a more relaxed life. Evening Post Books of Charleston is the publisher of “The Fall of the House of Murdaugh.”

DeWitt has spoken and sold his books at book clubs, universities, and book stores. Ironically, he hasn’t been able to place his books in Hampton establishments.

“A lot of stores right here in Hampton don’t want to sell the book because they don’t want to offend the Murdaughs and the Murdaugh law firm,” DeWitt says.

Ryan: “too many deaths to look away”

Ryan, 42, a former reporter for The State and Beaufort Gazette, said that with the murders of Maggie and Paul, followed soon by the death of Randolph Murdaugh III, Alex Murdaugh’s father, he became fascinated with knowing more.

“There were too many deaths to look away,” Ryan said. “The more I learned about the story, the more important I felt it was for the truth to be laid out... as an example of what happens when bad behavior is left untouched.”

He heard the news about Paul’s and Maggie’s murders just before he left with his family on a road trip out west. On the trip, someone in Utah learned he was from South Carolina. “The first thing they said was, ‘Murdaugh’! Incidents like those really convinced me the story had legs.”

Three months after the murders, Murdaugh was fired from his law firm for embezzling money. He was soon involved in what prosecutors call a flubbed fake murder to get his surviving son, Buster, a $10 million life insurance payout. Charges in the case are pending. (Buster was not implicated in the plot.) That shooting drew state and national attention, from daily journalists as well as podcasts and documentaries.

“It was a little disconcerting to have so much competition suddenly. But the story was so big, there was enough to go around,” Ryan said.

Ryan had written three previous nonfiction books, including “Jackpot,” about a group of educated young Southerners smuggling marijuana in the 1980s, experience that helped him in writing “Swamp Kings.”

Moreover, he had connections in the book industry, ties that won his upcoming book a recommendation from well-known writer Hampton Sides, whose blurb on “Swamp Kings” front cover says, “Jason Ryan has brought tenacious and enterprising new reporting to a spectacularly sordid story.”

Ryan said, “The difficulty in this one was getting people to talk. You just had to hammer away at the story until you caught a couple of breaks.”

Over two years, Ryan made dozens of trips to Hampton County, two hours each way from his Charleston home. Numerous people turned down his requests for interviews, but others spoke. Much of his work, such as scrolling through microfilm at the Hampton County library looking at years of old issues of the Hampton Guardian, was tedious, he said. “It took forever.”

“If i had any success in breaking new ground, it was because of good shoe leather reporting, knocking on doors, asking people if they wanted to talk to me.”

Now that the book is on the verge of being published by Pegasus Crime, a New York house, Ryan said, “I hope I treated everything with sensitivity and fairness.”

Other books

The months following the Murdaugh’s guilty verdicts in March 2023 saw a spate of Murdaugh books go on the market.

John Glatt, who writes true crime books, wrote a Murdaugh book, “Tangled Vines,” based in part on reporting by journalists covering the story. Podcaster Mandy Matney put together with collaborator Carolyn Murnick — an experienced New York-based writer and editor — a diary-like account of Matney’s reporting on the Murdaugh saga, “Blood on their Hands.”

And in perhaps the most publicized Murdaugh book to date, Colleton County Clerk of Court Becky Hill wrote “Behind the Doors of Justice,” which was withdrawn from publication in December after Hill was found to have plagiarized a key section of the book from a draft of an article by a BBC reporter.

Meanwhile, two other Murdaugh books by established writers are in the works.

Valerie Bauerlein, 52, a former reporter at The State Media Co. and current national reporter for the Wall Street Journal, was given an 18-month leave to write a book, which will be released by Ballantine Books of New York. Bauerlein got an 18-month book leave from The Journal after she wrote an in-depth story on the Murdaugh saga in 2021.

Bauerlein’s book is expected to be published by early fall. The title has not yet been released.

Another writer, James Lasdun, 65, of The New Yorker, is working on a Murdaugh book that’s expected to be published in 2025 by W.W. Norton.

Lasdun didn’t have much trouble getting a book contract after a long story he wrote for The New Yorker called “The Corrupt World Behind the Murdaugh Murders” attracted widespread attention and became the magazine’s most popular story for 2023. Lasdun’s provisional title is “The Family Man.”

Neither Ryan nor DeWitt minds competition.

“They’ll be telling this story for generations to come,” DeWitt said.