Months after embarking on what many perceived as a charm offensive intended to reestablish his family’s tattered public image, Buster Murdaugh – the surviving son of disbarred attorney/ accused killer Alex Murdaugh – has reportedly made it clear he is not in his father’s corner as the latter’s highly anticipated trial date approaches in January.
Murdaugh, 26, was interviewed ambush-style by a reporter for The (U.K.) Daily Mail as he emerged from “a modest $180,000 condo” on Hilton Head Island, S.C. reportedly owned by his girlfriend, Brooklynn White.
“Presumably you’re supporting your father,” reporter Laura Collins asked Murdaugh as he exited the home.
“You have no right to presume anything,” Murdaugh fired back.
“I don’t want to see it written anywhere that I’m supporting my father,” he added, per Collins’ report.
Asked whether he cared to add anything to that statement, Murdaugh declined.
“I have no interest in saying anything,” he said. “I have no comment.”
Collins described Murdaugh as “adamant” in saying he did not wish to be identified as supporting his father – and that he “politely” declined to comment further.
Fifty-four-year-old Alex Murdaugh is the man at the center of the ‘Murdaugh Murders’ crime and corruption saga – a sprawling, spiraling and still-unspooling maze of multi-faceted criminality which has drawn international attention to the South Carolina Lowcountry.
At the heart of this Southern Gothic narrative? A brutal double homicide that transpired sometime after 8:44 p.m. EDT on June 7, 2021 at the Murdaugh family’s 1,700-acre “Moselle” hunting property along the Salkehatchie River.
There, Alex Murdaugh is alleged to have savagely dispatched his wife, 52-year-old Maggie Murdaugh, and younger son, 22-year-old Paul Murdaugh, near the property’s dog kennels.
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Paul Murdaugh, Buster’s younger brother, was hit by a pair of shotgun blasts on that fateful evening – one to the head, the other to the arm and chest. Maggie Murdaugh was killed by multiple shots from a semi-automatic rifle at or around the time her son was killed. At least two of Maggie Murdaugh’s gunshot wounds were inflicted as she was lying wounded on the ground – consistent with initial reports we received of “execution-style” slayings.
Murdaugh has pleaded not guilty to murder charges and is scheduled to stand trial beginning on January 23, 2023.
The double homicide is a the key moment in the collapse of the “House of Murdaugh,” a crumbling legal dynasty which ran the Palmetto Lowcounty like a family fiefdom for nearly a century. Three generations of Murdaughs held the post of S.C. fourteenth circuit solicitor from 1920-2006, during which time the family and the law firm it founded enjoyed near dictatorial control of a five-county region in the Palmetto Lowcountry. Alex Murdaugh was a badge-carrying deputy in the office of the current solicitor – Duffie Stone – at the time of the murders.
Over the years, corruption appears to have been an integral part of the family business … and there are indications it could go much deeper than any of us covering the case ever suspected or imagined.
Named for his great-grandfather, Buster was kicked out of the University of South Carolina law school at the end of his second semester in 2019 after being accused of plagiarism, according to reporter Valerie Bauerlein of The Wall Street Journal. Getting Buster back into law school has been an obsession for Alex Murdaugh, who shelled out $60,000 to unscrupulous Columbia, S.C. attorney Butch Bowers in the hopes his son could be readmitted to the institution.
So far, those efforts have been unsuccessful …
In August, Buster attended the annual South Carolina Association for Justice (SCAJ) convention on Hilton Head Island with his uncle, attorney Randolph “Randy” Murdaugh IV. Alex Murdaugh led this association in 2015 and 2016 – and his portrait still hangs on the “wall of presidents” in the conference room of SCAJ’s downtown Columbia, S.C. headquarters.
I have not written much about Buster Murdaugh because, up to this point, he has declined to stake himself out on the saga enveloping his family.
“Ultimately, it is up to Buster Murdaugh to decide how he wishes to be defined as part of the dramatis personae of this still-unfolding saga,” I noted back in August. “Because right now he is the definitional blank slate.”
Could Murdaugh now be filling that slate in?
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR …
(Via: Phillippe Randolph Folks)
Will Folks is the founding editor of the news outlet you are currently reading. Prior to founding FITSNews, he served as press secretary to the governor of South Carolina. He lives in the Midlands region of the state with his wife and seven children.
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