Hear the 911 call Maggie and Paul Murdaugh made after housekeeper Gloria Satterfield’s fall
In haunting detail, a newly released 911 call paints Maggie Murdaugh’s last moments with housekeeper Gloria Satterfield, just one of countless scandals circling the South Carolina legal family.
The call, released Tuesday by the South Carolina State Law Enforcement Division, was made at 9:24 a.m. on Feb. 2, 2018.
Murdaugh, who sounds calm, told the operator that her housekeeper had fallen and her head was bleeding.
“I can’t get her up,” Murdaugh said.
The Murdaugh family mysteries: a timeline of murders, cryptic deaths, scandals and power
Satterfield fell going down brick steps outside their property, the matriarch told the operator, and is “mumbling.”
The operator then had to insist that Murdaugh continue answering questions, even though paramedics were already en route to their home.
After Murdaugh asked to get off the phone, the operator asked her to bring the cell phone down to Satterfield, at which point a male voice, identified by Satterfield’s family’s attorney as Paul Murdaugh, the son of Maggie and her now-disgraced lawyer husband Alex Murdaugh, got on the call and told the operator that “she can’t talk.”
“She’s cracked her head and there’s blood on the concrete and she’s bleeding out of her left ear. And out of her head. She’s cracked her skull,” Paul said.
“I was holding her up and she told me to turn her loose, and she was trying to use her arm but then she fell back over.”
After the operator asked if Satterfield had ever had a stroke, Paul demands she “stop asking these questions.”
Alex Murdaugh, the embattled family patriarch, previously claimed that Satterfield had tripped over his family’s dogs, but there was no mention of the cause of the fall on the 911 call.
Satterfield was airlifted to a hospital and died more than three weeks later on Feb. 26, 2018.
SLED opened an investigation into Satterfield’s death in September after Hampton County Coroner Angela Topper reported that an autopsy was never performed and the 57-year-old woman’s death was never reported to the coroner’s office.
Satterfield’s death was listed as “natural” on her death certificate, which Topper said was “inconsistent with injuries sustained in a trip and fall accident.”
A separate investigation has also been opened into the missing insurance payouts intended to go to Satterfield’s sons, which Alex Murdaugh allegedly stole. He was arrested in October and charged with two felony counts of obtaining property by false pretenses.
Murdaugh also faces separate charges for trying and failing to stage his own death so his eldest son, Buster, could collect his $10 million life insurance payout.
The South Carolina legal family’s legacy has been dissolving since Maggie and Paul were found fatally shot on their property in June.
