Alex Murdaugh Gets Life in Prison: What to Know and Watch About the Multiple Deaths Associated With the Family

etonline.com:

found guilty in his double murder trial. On Friday, he was sentenced to life in prison.This is the latest development in a long and complex story, as the Murdaughs have been at the center of a seemingly never-ending scandal after a number of deaths in the Lowcountry region of South Carolina became associated with the American legal dynasty, helping to unravel the power they had over these local counties and expose the corruption in the legal battle that has since followed.

Following the unsolved 2015 hit-and-run of gay teen Stephen Smith and the 2019 boat accident that resulted in the drowning of Paul Murdaugh's high school friend, Mallory Beach, as well as the unexpected 2018 death of the family's longtime housekeeper, Gloria Satterfield, lawyer Alex Murdaugh was accused of killing his wife, Maggie, and their youngest son, Paul, in 2021.

Since January 2023, Alex has been standing trial for the murders of his two family members while also being accused of a number of other alleged crimes, with the disgraced patriarch facing charges for a murder-for-hire suicide scheme as well as embezzlement and fraud.

In total, the state has brought 99 charges against Alex, alleging he defrauded many of his legal clients out of millions of dollars.While Alex denies responsibility for the killings or the other charges lobbied against him, he did admit to lying when he was on the stand. «I didn’t shoot my wife or my son any time -- ever,” he said, while the reports that he blamed paranoia fueled by his painkiller addiction for not disclosing the truth of his whereabouts the night of Maggie and Paul's deaths.