Man accused of shooting disgraced S.C. lawyer Alex Murdaugh in staged murder attempt due in court on drug charges
The man accused of plotting with an embattled South Carolina lawyer in an assisted suicide plot gone wrong will return to court Monday on separate drug charges.
Curtis Smith, 61, was charged in mid-September with distribution of methamphetamine and possession of marijuana at the same time that he was busted for the insurance fraud scheme, although it’s unclear in the charges were related to attorney Alex Murdaugh.
Lawyers for the South Carolina legal scion have painted Smith as Murdaugh’s longtime drug dealer, helping to fuel the addiction that landed him in rehab in September.
Over Labor Day weekend, Murdaugh reported to police that he had been shot while stranded on a rural road fixing a tire, three months after he got home to find wife Maggie and 22-year-old son Paul dead on their Hampton County property.
The Murdaugh family mysteries: a timeline of murders, cryptic deaths, scandals and power
Within days, Murdaugh retracted his story, instead telling police that he and Smith, a former client, had concocted the plan to kill Murdaugh so his eldest son, Buster, could get the $10 million life insurance payout.
Murdaugh has since been charged with insurance fraud, as well as a litany of other crimes, including stealing millions of dollars that were supposed to be an insurance payout to the sons of his family’s housekeeper, who died after falling on their property in 2018.
Smith was charged with assisted suicide, assault and battery of a high aggravated nature, pointing and presenting a firearm, insurance fraud and conspiracy to commit insurance fraud.
But Smith has denied he had any idea what Murdaugh was plotting until he showed up that day.
“He’s standing there like this,” Smith told “48 Hours” last month, holding his fingers out like a gun. “And I said, ‘I can’t do this.’”
Murdaugh and Smith allegedly struggled and the gun went off while still in the lawyer’s hand, according to Smith.
Murdaugh’s lawyer, Dick Harpootlian, claims that his client saw his death as the only way out after the fatal shootings of his wife and son. Their murders have still not been solved but Murdaugh’s other lawyer, Jim Griffin, confessed recently that the embattled attorney is a person of interest in the crime.
