Alex Murdaugh SC murder trial in double killings of wife, son to start in January 2023

Disbarred attorney Alex Murdaugh will stand trial beginning in late January in the double slayings of his wife and youngest son.

The trial is expected to last three weeks — Jan. 23 through Feb. 10 — according to a scheduling order issued Tuesday by state Judge Bentley Price, the administrative judge for Colleton County, where the trial will take place.

Judge Clifton Newman has been assigned to the case.

“Alex is looking forward to his day in court and we are confident that he will be acquitted after an impartial Colleton County jury considers all the evidence,” Murdaugh’s attorneys Dick Harpootlian and Jim Griffin said in a statement Thursday.

“Alex continues to hope that everyone responsible for Maggie and Paul’s death will eventually be brought to justice,” they added.

An investigation into the June 2021 slayings of Murdaugh’s wife, Maggie, 52, and youngest son, Paul, 22, at the family’s Colleton County 1,700 acre estate took more than a year before a state grand jury finally indicted Murdaugh for the shooting deaths last summer.

In that time, the unsolved killings became the focus of a national and even international news coverage. Numerous television documentaries have been produced or are in the works about the case, and more than six people are writing books. There are more than a handful of podcasts and social media sites dedicated to the case.

Murdaugh has pleaded not guilty and repeatedly asserted that he wants to be acquitted at a trial so the State Law Enforcement Division can find the “real” killer.

The prosecution’s case will likely be made by scientific and technical evidence, much of which has yet to be made public. Prosecutors and SLED have consistently said little about evidence in the case.

There were no videos, no known eyewitnesses and the death weapons — Paul was killed by a shotgun, Maggie by a rifle — are not known to have been located. Murdaugh has said he found their bodies outside on the ground near outlying dog kennels the evening of June 7, 2021, when he returned home an hour after nightfall.

The trial — which is likely to be televised — is expected to be one of the watched courtroom drama around the country in years.

Before Murdaugh, 54, was indicted in their deaths last July, he was slapped with successive indictments charging him with thefts allegedly committed over the years from clients, fellow lawyers, associates and his law firm.

In addition to the murder charges, Murdaugh faces numerous counts of alleged fraud totaling some $8.4 million in thefts committed over more than a dozen years.

No trial date has been set on the financial crimes cases.

Adding to the public interest in the case is the fact that Murdaugh is a fourth-generation member of one of South Carolina’s prominent legal families, known for political clout, social prominence, large land holdings and personal fortunes.

His great-grandfather, grandfather and father served more than 85 successive years as solicitor, or elected criminal prosecutor, in a five-county Lowcountry region. One irony to the case is that on the rear wall of the courtroom in which Murdaugh will be tried for murder hangs an oil portrait of his late grandfather, the legendary Buster Murdaugh, who was solicitor from 1940 to 1987.

Each of the earlier Murdaughs was also a member of the family law firm, which for years had a reputation for getting lucrative settlements and verdicts against corporations in personal injury and wrongful death cases.

Murdaugh was fired from the firm in September 2021 after the firm became aware that he had stolen money, the firm said.

Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to reflect the new trial dates, Jan. 23 through Feb. 10, after a judge issued a new scheduling order on Friday, Oct. 14, 2022.