As the Murdaugh family continues to fall from grace amid Alex Murdaugh’s guilty conviction for the murder of his wife and son, and alleged connections to suspicious deaths over the years, another mysterious Murdaugh family tragedy is brewing. come light.
Alex Murdaugh’s great-grandfather, Randolph Murdaugh Sr., an elected attorney and patriarch of the family, died when his car mysteriously stopped on the tracks in 1940 and a train crashed into it. The death led to a payout in favor of his son, who was nicknamed Buster.
In the Netflix documentary “Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal,” journalist Michael M. DeWitt Jr. that according to the then comments of the train conductor Murdaugh Sr. was near the tracks and waved at the train as it sped towards him and then accelerated his car so that it was on the rails at the time of impact. His body was found 50 meters away from the crossing.
Four generations later, the Murdaugh family is still surrounded by untimely deaths, including that of Mallory Beach who died in a boating accident in 2019 with Paul Murdaugh at the wheel, Stephen Smith, a contemporary of the Murdaugh sons who was found dead on the side of the road in 2015, and the housekeeper Gloria Satterfield.
And in 2021, Alex Murdaugh’s wife Maggie and his son Paul were shot on their estate on the Moselle. Murdaugh was convicted of their murders on Friday.
Alex Murdaugh’s great-grandfather, Randolph Murdaugh Sr., 59, was killed in 1940 when his car mysteriously stopped on the tracks and a train ran into him
Railroad tracks can be seen in Hampton County. Murdaugh Sr. died on July 19, 1940 when his car mysteriously stopped at a railroad crossing as a train pulled out in the middle of the night.
Four generations later, the Murdaugh family is still surrounded by untimely deaths. Pictured: Alex Murdaugh with wife Maggie and their sons Buster (left) and Paul (right)
Details of the suspicious death of Randolph Murdaugh Sr. were discovered by DeWitt Jr., in the archives of the local Hampton County Guardian newspaper, and highlighted in a report by The Washington Post.
The son of a wealthy businessman and the grandson of the nephew of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, he attended the Naval Academy at Annapolis and the law school at the University of South Carolina before returning to Murdaugh’s first home. family business.
He was elected an attorney in 1920 for the 14th Judicial Circuit, a large portion of South Carolina spanning five counties. A Murdaugh would hold that position for most of the next 86 years.
Murdaugh Sr. battled an illness before his assassination, but felt well enough to visit a friend on the evening of July 18, 1940. While driving home around 1 a.m., his car mysteriously stopped at a railroad crossing, according to DeWitt Jr. who quoted newspaper clippings of the time from the Greenville News.
A freight train crashed into Murdaugh’s car, killing him instantly, it was reported. Another report from the Hampton County Guardian had the train conductor stating that Murdaugh Sr.’s car. near the intersection and that he waved at the train as it sped toward him. As the train approached, the car accelerated and landed on the rails as the train collided.
The Hampton County Guardian reported at the time that the body of Murdaugh Sr. was found 50 meters from the crossing point.
His death was ruled an accident, despite speculation that it was alcohol-related or possibly suicide.
The son of Murdaugh Sr. – who is also Alex Murdaugh’s grandfather, Randolph ‘Buster’ Murdaugh Jr. – then became the new lawyer.
He and the Murdaugh family sued the Charleston & Western Carolina Railway Co. due to the accident, it was reported.
The company was being sued for $100,000, the Greenville News had reported. It was arranged privately for an undisclosed sum.
His son, Randolph Murdaugh III – the father of Alex Murdaugh – succeeded him as attorney from 1987 to 2005.
In 2018, during a public speech, he joked, “A train killed my grandfather in 1940, and they killed our people. [clients] since.’
This portrait of the late 14th Circuit Solicitor Randolph ‘Buster’ Murdaugh Jr. was removed from court when his grandson Alex Murdaugh went on trial for the murder of his wife and son
Portraits of former attorneys Randolph Murdaugh Sr., Randolph Murdaugh aka Buster Murdaugh, and Randolph Murdaugh III hang on the wall in a Courtroom of the Hampton County Courthouse
Just before Alex Murdaugh went on trial for the murders of his wife, Maggie, 52, and son Paul, 22, Judge Clifton Newman ordered the removal of the portrait of the late 14th Circuit Solicitor Randolph ‘Buster’ Murdaugh Jr.
For more than a century, the Murdaugh family wielded tremendous power in the Lowcountry, with three generations of the family serving as elected attorneys, as prosecutors there are called, on the 14th Circuit from 1920 to 2006.
Alex Murdaugh himself worked as a part-time district attorney in the same office until he was charged in a staggering web of alleged crimes, including embezzling millions from clients and partners, murdering his wife and son, and attempted suicide by a hit man for an insurance payout.
Murdaugh III died of cancer just days after Alex Murdaugh’s wife and son were shot dead in June 2021.
Alex Murdaugh’s alibi after the murders was that he visited his father in the hospital, but cell phone records and a video taken by his son Paul placed him at the crime scene minutes before the murders.
At least three people have now died on the Mosel estate, including the murders of Maggie and Paul.
And in 2021, Alex Murdaugh’s wife Maggie and his son Paul were shot on their estate on the Moselle. Murdaugh was convicted of their murders on Friday
Murdaugh claimed he visited his elderly mother who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease and came home to find Maggie and Paul dead near the estate’s dog kennels.
Three years earlier, in 2018, the Murdaughs’ housekeeper Gloria Satterfield, who had worked for them for 20 years, died on a mysterious journey and fell into the family home.
She was found at the bottom of the stairs leading to the family’s home and is said to have tripped over the dogs. She died of her injuries three weeks later.
There have been other deaths associated with the Murdaugh family.
In 2019, Paul Murdaugh was arrested and charged in connection with an alleged drunken boating accident that killed 19-year-old Mallory Beach.
He was indicted on one count of boating under the influence causing death and two counts of causing significant bodily harm.
But Paul and his mother Maggie were killed before he could stand trial.
Beach, 19, was thrown off the boat when it crashed on the Archers Creek Bridge in Beaufort South Carolina in 2019. Her body was found five days later.
Paul was charged in April 2019 with three counts of driving while intoxicated. But while awaiting trial, the 22-year-old was shot in 2021.
Three months after the murders, on September 4, 2021, Alex Murdaugh was shot by the side of the road in Hampton County, SC
While some worried that the gunman who killed Maggie and Paul was targeting Alex, just a few weeks later, authorities revealed that Murdaugh allegedly hired Curtis Edward Smith to shoot him in a suicide plot so that Buster could receive a $10 million. life insurance benefits.
On March 2, 2023, after six weeks of harrowing testimony, Alex Murdaugh was found guilty of murdering his wife and son and sentenced to two life sentences.
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