Murdaugh Murders Explained: The Real Life Story Behind the Netflix ...

Around 1:15 a.m. the group re-boarded the boat with Paul still driving over the objections of his friends. Paul soon began driving erratically and by 2:20 a.m. the boat crashed into Archers Creek Bridge. After regaining their balance and senses the six occupants of the boat regrouped to discover that one of their own, Mallory Beach was missing. Ultimately, Mallory’s body was discovered on March 3 about five miles down river from the crash scene. On April 18, Paul Murdaugh was indicted and charged with three felony counts including boating under the influence, causing the death of Beach, and injuring his friends.

While this was a tragic enough story to begin with, what elevated it in the public eye was the influential players involved. Paul is the platonic ideal of the “spoiled rich boy” archetype and the police arriving on the scene of the accident certainly treated him as such. Despite being visibly hammered and underage, Paul was not given a field sobriety test, taken to jail for booking, or even handcuffed. Meanwhile, Paul’s equally “spoiled rich boy” father Alex immediately sprung into action after the accident. While police were still searching for Mallory Beach, Alex arrived at the hospital and went room to room to speak with the survivors. Several claim that he tried to get them all on the same page and assert that Paul wasn’t driving the boat.

As bleak as this whole state of affairs was, it still might have faded away into history as an unfortunate case of hyper local corruption. Thanks to what came next, however, the death of Mallory Beach was merely the opening salvo of a larger story.

On June 7, 2021 at 10:06 p.m., Alex Murdaugh called 911 and reported he had discovered the dead bodies of his son Paul and his wife Maggie near the dog kennels at their hunting lodge. Police later determined that both had been shot multiple times with multiple guns.

You may recognize the name “Paul Murdaugh” from three second ago when we talked about him accidentally killing Mallory Beach. Now Paul, just 22 years old and facing three felony counts, was dead. Naturally, many people began to wonder if Paul and Maggie’s murder was connected to the boating case. South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) certainly did. By October of that year, SLED had indicated that none other than Alex Murdaugh was a person of interest in the case.

By July 2022, Alex Murdaugh was indicted with several charged including two counts of murder. That’s right: Alex Murdaugh (ALLEGEDLY) murdered his estranged wife and youngest son. But why though? That’s the question that the prosecution must answer in the State of South Carolina v. Richard Alexander Murdaugh trial that is currently underway. Revelations that have come out since Murdaugh’s arrest, however, suggest that Alex may have been attempting to create a distraction to forestall the collapse of the house of cards that was his life.