Alex Murdaugh Case: Moselle Murders and the 2027 Retrial

A little after 10 p.m. on June 7, 2021, a man called 911 from Moselle, a family hunting property near Islandton in Colleton County, South Carolina. “My wife and child have been shot badly!” he said. The caller was Alex Murdaugh, a personal injury lawyer from one of the best-known legal families in the Lowcountry. His wife, Maggie, and their younger son, Paul, were dead near the property’s dog kennels.

A Family Name in the Courthouse

Margaret “Maggie” Murdaugh was 52. She and Alex had two sons, Buster and Paul. Paul, the younger, was 22. The family name carried weight in the area. Paul’s grandfather, great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather had all served as the elected solicitor, the local prosecutor, according to the Associated Press.

In February 2019, a boat crashed after an oyster roast, and 19-year-old Mallory Beach died. Prosecutors charged Paul, then 19, with boating under the influence causing death. He pleaded not guilty. Two years later he was still awaiting trial, and Alex Murdaugh was a named defendant in the Beach family’s lawsuit over the crash.

The Night at Moselle

Colleton County deputies found Maggie and Paul around 10 p.m. The State Law Enforcement Division, known as SLED, took over the case. No one was arrested. Murdaugh told investigators he had not been down at the kennels that evening.

Prosecutors would later argue that the date was no accident. According to the South Carolina Supreme Court’s summary of the state’s theory, his law firm’s chief financial officer confronted him that morning about $792,000 in missing fees. A lawyer for Mallory Beach’s family also had a hearing set for three days later, seeking to force Murdaugh to open his financial records.

A Shot on Old Salkehatchie Road

On September 4, 2021, over Labor Day weekend, Murdaugh called 911 again. He said a man in a pickup truck had shot him while he stopped on Old Salkehatchie Road in Hampton County. The bullet grazed his head. Within days, the account fell apart. His family’s law firm said he had taken money from the business and fired him. He checked into rehab for opioid addiction.

SLED charged Curtis Edward Smith, 61, a former client, with crimes including assisted suicide and insurance fraud. Investigators said Murdaugh had arranged the shooting so his surviving son, Buster, could collect a $10 million life insurance policy. His own lawyer, Dick Harpootlian, confirmed that account. Investigators soon traced thefts from his clients, including the estate of his former housekeeper. The AP has reported the total as about $12 million. In July 2022, Murdaugh was indicted on two counts of murder.

Six Weeks in Walterboro

The trial opened in late January 2023 at the Colleton County Courthouse in Walterboro and ran about six weeks. The defense pointed out that no blood or DNA evidence tied Murdaugh or his clothing to the killings.

The key exhibit was a short video Paul recorded at the kennels at 8:44 p.m. Witnesses identified Alex’s voice in the background. On February 23, 2023, Murdaugh took the stand and admitted he had been there. “I lied about being down there, and I’m so sorry that I did,” he said. He blamed paranoid thinking caused by his drug addiction, and he denied killing his wife and son.

Prosecutors also walked the jury through his financial crimes, arguing he killed his family to buy time as the thefts closed in. On March 2, 2023, after about three hours of deliberation, the jury convicted him of both murders and two weapons charges. The next day, Judge Clifton Newman gave him two consecutive life sentences without parole.

The money cases followed. He pleaded guilty in state court and received 27 years. On April 1, 2024, U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel sentenced him to 40 years in federal prison on 22 counts, including wire fraud, bank fraud and money laundering, and ordered $8.76 million in restitution.

The Clerk and the Jury

In September 2023, Murdaugh’s lawyers accused Colleton County Clerk of Court Rebecca “Becky” Hill of jury tampering. Hill had overseen the jury, and she had since written a book about the trial, Behind the Doors of Justice. Jurors later said she told them to watch Murdaugh closely when he testified and not to be fooled by his defense.

Former Chief Justice Jean Toal heard the claim in January 2024. All 12 jurors testified. One, known as Juror Z, said Hill’s remarks made it seem he was already guilty. The other 11 said the evidence alone decided their votes. Hill denied talking to jurors about the case. On January 29, 2024, Toal denied a new trial, refusing to overturn the verdict over what she called “fleeting and foolish comments by a publicity-seeking clerk of court.”

Hill’s book was pulled after she admitted plagiarizing part of it from a BBC reporter. She resigned in March 2024 and was charged in May 2025 after a SLED investigation. On December 8, 2025, she pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice, perjury and misconduct in office, tied to releasing sealed trial exhibits, lying under oath at the January 2024 hearing and using her office to promote her book. She received three years’ probation and 100 hours of community service. Prosecutors did not charge her with jury tampering, saying they could not prove it beyond a reasonable doubt, The Post and Courier reported.

The Reversal

On May 13, 2026, the South Carolina Supreme Court unanimously threw out the murder convictions and ordered a new trial. The unsigned opinion found that Hill’s remarks were improper outside influence and that the state had not shown they were harmless. The justices wrote that she “placed her fingers on the scales of justice.” They also said the trial judge should have limited the financial evidence, which filled about 12.5 hours of testimony over ten trial days.

Attorney General Alan Wilson said his office respected the decision, but “no one is above the law.” The state will try Murdaugh again. Judge Debra McCaslin found in August that he “would be unable to receive a fair and impartial trial in Colleton County.” On September 8, 2026, she moved the case to Sumter County, about 80 miles away. Jury selection is set for April 5, 2027.

As of October 2026, the retrial is pending and the two sides are fighting over evidence, including defense requests for new DNA testing of material from under Maggie’s fingernails. Murdaugh stays in prison either way: the 40-year federal sentence stands. Meanwhile, Hulu released the scripted series Murdaugh: Death in the Family, with Jason Clarke and Patricia Arquette, in October 2025, and Netflix added a 31-minute documentary, Instadocs: Alex Murdaugh, Unconvicted, in late May 2026.

Why This Case Still Matters

The ruling set a clear rule for South Carolina courts. When a court official talks to jurors about a case, the state must prove the contact did no harm, and judges may not ask jurors how it shaped their votes. A clerk’s remarks to jurors helped undo a verdict that took six weeks to reach.

The case also follows a pattern readers of the Susan Smith case will recognize the setting: a small South Carolina county where a parent’s call for help became a national story. And as in the Robert Durst case, a wealthy man’s own words became central evidence. Legally, Alex Murdaugh is again presumed innocent of killing Maggie and Paul. More than five years after their deaths, no verdict stands.

In April 2027, a Sumter County jury is expected to hear the 8:44 p.m. video and the admitted lie again, this time without a clerk weighing in. Will 12 strangers, 80 miles from Moselle, see what the first jury saw?

If you or someone you love is struggling or thinking about suicide, call or text the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988, any time, day or night.

Related Cases

Chris Watts and the Watts family murders — a husband’s TV appeal for his missing family, and the confession that followed.
The Susan Smith case — a 1994 South Carolina story about a carjacker who never existed.
The Robert Durst case — a real estate heir, a wife who vanished in 1982 and a documentary that changed everything.

Sources

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Header photo: aerial view of Edisto Beach, Colleton County, South Carolina (2017) by Carol M. Highsmith, no known restrictions on publication (Carol M. Highsmith Archive), via Library of Congress.

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The Murdaugh Case: Two Life Sentences, a Clerk’s Whispers and a Retrial in 2027

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