After South Carolina attorney Alex Murdaugh’s wife and son were found murdered on the family’s sprawling Colleton County property in June of 2021, his life quickly began to unravel.

In the months that followed, Alex was accused of orchestrating his own botched shooting, he was fired from his job after accusations that he’d been stealing from his law firm and clients for years, and he found himself at the center of his wife and son’s double-homicide investigation, according to Dateline: Secrets Uncovered.

But even as Alex’s shocking lies and deceptions were exposed one after another, investigators still struggled to place the once prominent attorney at the scene of the shootings that claimed the life of his wife Maggie, 52, and youngest son Paul, 22, on the night of June 7, 2021.

The key to cracking the case ultimately came from Paul himself, who left one haunting clue behind in his final minutes alive, according to the Season 15 episode of Dateline: Secrets Uncovered titled “The Murdaugh Murders: Inside the Investigation.” 

About Alex Murdaugh’s family 

For nearly a century, the Murdaugh family helped uphold the law in South Carolina’s Lowcountry region, where Alex’s father, grandfather and great-grandfather all served as powerful prosecutors. 

The family also founded one of the state’s most prominent law firms. Alex later joined the firm as a personal injury attorney, carving out a lavish lifestyle for himself and his wife and two sons as they enjoyed a beach home, boat, and large 1,700-acre hunting compound, complete with a large home, dog kennels and hunting grounds.

The night Maggie and Paul Murdaugh died 

But the family’s seemingly idyllic life came to an end on June 7, 2021, when Alex told authorities he arrived home just after 10 p.m. after visiting his ailing mother and discovered his wife and youngest son shot to death near the dog kennels on the property.

“Please hurry,” he told a 911 dispatcher in a frantic call placed at 10:07 p.m.

Authorities arrived to find Paul and Maggie each lying face down after suffering gunshots to the head. While Paul was killed with a shotgun, Maggie appeared to have been shot with an assault rifle.

“You have two different ammunitions used to kill them. So automatically, I mean, you’re gonna think, ok well, possibly have two shooters,” Senior Special Agent David Owen of the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) told Dateline anchor Craig Melvin.

Just hours after the murders, Alex told Owen during an interview inside the investigator’s vehicle that he had dinner as usual that night with Maggie and Paul. (His oldest son Buster was no longer living at home). Alex added that after dinner, he watched a little television on the couch before falling asleep, while Maggie and Paul headed down to the dog kennels.

Alex claimed that he woke up around 9 p.m. and left the house to visit his mother, before returning home just after 10 p.m. and making the grisly discovery at the kennels.

When asked whether he knew of anyone that may have wanted to harm his family, Alex said there was no one he was “overly suspicious” of, but he did offer up one possible clue. 

“What comes to my mind is my son Paul was in a boat wreck, uh, a couple years ago,” Alex said, as seen in interview footage shown in the episode. 

Paul Murdaugh’s link to fatal boat crash

At the time of his death, Paul had been facing three criminal counts of boating under the influence causing death and great bodily injury in connection with a February 2019 boat crash. 

Paul was accused of operating his father’s boat while drunk, which was carrying five passengers in addition to Paul, when it smashed into a bridge, throwing 19-year-old Mallory Beach from the boat. Her body was discovered in the water nearly a week later.

Alex and others were also the subject of a wrongful death lawsuit filed in civil court by Beach’s family in the wake of the tragedy. Alex had been scheduled to appear in court, where he’d be forced to answer questions about his finances, just three days after Maggie and Paul were killed.

Investigators collected DNA samples from the boat passengers and their family members and were quickly able to rule them out as potential suspects in the double-murder of Maggie and Paul. 

Alex Murdaugh grazed by bullet

As investigators continued to try to put the pieces of the shocking murders together, the case took an unexpected turn in September of 2021 when Alex called 911 again, this time claiming that he’d been shot in the head while changing a tire along the roadway.

After learning that Alex had been shot in the back of the head, SLED Senior Special Agent Ryan Kelly rushed to the hospital, but was surprised to find that Alex was not significantly hurt and had only been grazed by the bullet.

While at the scene where Alex had been shot, Kelly noticed that the tire in question looked like it had been deliberately cut with a pocket knife and authorities later recovered a pocket knife tossed not far from the car, with Alex’s DNA on it.

They suspected Alex had played a role in the bizarre shooting — something that was soon confirmed by Alex himself. After admitting to a 20-year addiction to opioids and heading to rehab, Alex and his attorney Dick Harpootlian called SLED investigators. 

Alex confessed that just before the roadside shooting, he’d been fired from his law firm after being caught stealing money from the firm and many of his legal clients, including the family of his one-time housekeeper. 

Alex claimed that he’d been so despondent over Maggie and Paul’s deaths and losing his job that he wanted to die, but that he wanted his surviving son Buster to be able to collect a $10 million life insurance policy. So he crafted a plan to enlist his former client Curtis “Eddie” Smith to shoot him on the road.

Alex was arrested and charged with insurance fraud, conspiracy to commit insurance fraud, and filing a false police report. 

Smith — who denied knowing anything about the insurance scheme but did admit to shooting Alex — was also charged in connection to the case, according to the Dateline: Secrets Uncovered episode.

Alex Murdaugh indicted for financial crimes

Over the next few months, Alex was indicted for dozens of financial crimes after prosecutors alleged that he’d used his position at the law firm to steal millions from his law partners and clients for decades. 

Investigators believed that he may have killed Maggie and Paul to keep the financial crimes a secret, especially as the hearing for the wrongful death lawsuit that had originally been scheduled for just days after the murders threatened to expose his actions. 

“If he’s willing to steal from the most vulnerable of people and live this extravagant lifestyle, then he’s 100% able to kill Maggie and Paul to continue his facade,” Kelly said.

But authorities still had no way to definitively place Alex at the scene on the night of the murders. Investigators were finally able to do just that after gaining access to Paul’s cell phone. 

Alex was indicted for killing his wife and son on July 14, 2022. His sensational trial began six months later. 

Along with laying out their theory of motive, prosecutors also presented data from Alex’s Chevrolet Suburban that showed that on the way to his mother’s house on the night of the murders, he had slowed to a speed of just 42 miles per hour not far from where his wife’s phone was later discovered, before accelerating up to 74 miles per hour.

The data also showed that he’d placed that 911 call just 17 seconds after returning home, which prosecutors argued wasn’t enough time for him to have discovered the bodies.

In a bold move, Alex took the stand in his defense and insisted he would never hurt his wife or son. But, he did admit to being at the dog kennels that night and told the jurors he lied because he “wasn’t thinking clearly.” 

“I don’t think I was capable of reason and I lied about being down there and I’m so sorry that I did,” he testified. “You know, oh, what a tangled web we weave.”