“A 19-year-old kid with a bright future turned up dead with his face bashed in on a rural road in an area where there were just a handful of murders that year, and the local newspaper wrote about it only one time.”
When it comes to true crime, the Murdaugh family saga might go down in history as having one of the most convoluted and shocking stories of all time.
Since they first made news in 2019, countless dogged reporters have worked to unravel the many (many!) mysteries surrounding this South Carolina family, including (but certainly not limited to): a fatal boat crash, in which one teenager died and son Paul Murdaugh was accused of being the drunk driver responsible; the execution-style deaths of Paul and his mother, Maggie, at their hunting compound two years later; the eventual charging and conviction of Alex Murdaugh for the murder of his wife and son; and more.
One such reporter in particular, Mandy Matney, was investigating this case from the beginning. Now, the reporter and Murdaugh Murders podcast host has a new book out — which is convenient for those of us who can’t seem to get enough of this sordid story. It’s also the perfect time to refresh yourself on the ins and outs of this tale, now that we finally know how it ends: This year, Alex Murdaugh was found guilty of the murders of his wife and son. He is now serving out two life sentences in prison, and was recently sentenced to an additional 27 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to over a dozen financial crimes.
Blood on Their Hands: Murder, Corruption, and the Fall of the Murdaugh Dynasty covers Matney’s experience chasing the truth about the Murdaughs. After consuming countless documentaries, podcasts, and deep-dive articles on this family, you might think you know everything there is to know about them. But, unsurprisingly, Matney revealed even more about the dynasty, and we’ve compiled the biggest bombshells below.
Paul Murdaugh had a reputation for violence before the boat crash
When news of a fatal boat crash in South Carolina hit the airwaves in February 2019, countless people initially dismissed the tragic accident as just that: an accident. A mistake committed by a teenager, or maybe several teenagers, who drank too much.
But for a local journalist like Matney, this situation seemed charged with an unusual tension from the very beginning. As she was doing her standard reporting work on the crash, she was surprised to see that members of the community already held extremely strong and extremely negative perceptions of Paul, the son of Alex and Maggie Murdaugh who was driving the boat at the time of the crash. This was particularly
“Even before our story went live, it was impossible to miss all the boat crash chatter online,” Matney wrote. “[Paul Murdaugh’s name] was everywhere, and the rumors connected were chilling: [he] had beaten a kid with a baseball bat; his daddy had everyone in law enforcement in his pocket; no one in this town ever wanted to cross the Murdaughs — it went on and on.”
It was eventually confirmed that Paul had been intoxicated the night of the crash and had refused to let anyone else drive the boat, even when the teenagers insisted.
Alex Murdaugh donated to Republican and Democrat political campaigns — but why?
Unfortunately, the boat crash, which killed 19-year-old Mallory Beach, was only the beginning, when it came to unraveling the strangely threatening world of the Murdaugh family. As Matney spent the following months digging deeper into each Murdaugh family member’s background, she found some surprising information about Alex, the powerful patriarch: He donated heavily to local politicians on both sides of the political aisle.
This bemused Matney at first, since Murdaugh seemed to be a tried-and-true conservative. Why would he feel the need to donate to Democrats, too? But Matney soon realized this is a common strategy for wealthy men like Murdaugh.
”It meant you always had a winner in your debt,” she explained.
The death of 19-year-old Stephen Smith was virtually ignored by local media for years
The boat crash that killed Beach received plenty of attention in South Carolina — but there was another fatal incident connected to the Murdaughs that took place earlier that received virtually no attention when it happened. It would take years for the death of 19-year-old Stephen Smith to get the attention it deserved, and this only happened once journalists like Matney started to draw potential connections between Smith and the Murdaugh family.
In 2015, Smith’s body was found on the side of the road. The medical examiner ruled his death a “hit and run.” Even though his injuries were not indicative of a car accident, or the fact that no car debris were found at the scene of the crime, little attention was paid to the incident, Matney explains in the book.
“A 19-year-old kid with a bright future turned up dead with his face bashed in on a rural road in an area where there were just a handful of murders that year, and the local newspaper wrote about it only one time,” Matney wrote.
So why didn’t anyone pay attention to it at the time? Why did the police let the case go cold?
“Why didn’t we do more?” Matney posed, acknowledging that she was working as a journalist at the time of Smith’s death, and therefore has some personal responsibility to answering the question. “Ask our overworked and underfunded colleagues who were barely making their quotas,” she said. “In that kind of climate, leads unfortunately fell through the cracks all the time; we had the resources to pursue only so much. All I could do was shake my head at the missed opportunity.”
Rumors persist that the Murdaugh family is connected to Smith’s death, but for now, they’re just that: rumors. However, police officially reopened the investigation in 2021, and that investigation is ongoing.
Alex Murdaugh’s car had “run-flat tires,” a very unusual feature
Years after Smith’s death, when Matney began investigating the Murdaughs full-time following the fatal boat crash, she learned something interesting about Alex Murdaugh’s car, a Mercedes Benz.
“His car had a special kind of tire that ensures a car can drive for fifty miles even with a flat tire,” Matney wrote. “[Mercedes Benzes] don’t typically come with run-flat tires, which means his alibi about pulling over to deal with a flat tire was doubly suspicious.”
Matney is referencing an alibi Murdaugh gave regarding an incident in 2021, two years after the boat crash and a few months after Maggie and Paul Murdaugh were fatally shot on their family compound, in which Alex was allegedly shot in the head while standing on the side of the road. He claimed he had pulled over to fix a flat tire when someone pulled over and shot him — but as Matney’s evidence points out, it’s unlikely he would have needed to fix a flat tire with the ones he had on his car.
Prosecutors now believe that Alex paid someone to kill him so that his living son, Buster, could collect a life insurance policy.
…Yes, this story gets more and more unbelievable the more you dig into it.
Alex and Maggie Murdaugh might have been living apart at the time of her and Paul’s death
One of Matney’s biggest breaks in the Murdaugh case was when she managed to cast major doubt on Alex Murdaugh’s alibi for the night of Maggie and Paul Murdaugh’s murders.
“Sources told us video recovered from Paul’s unlocked iPhone showed Alex talking with Maggie near the kennels on the evening of her murder,” Matney wrote. “We had also recently reported that Maggie appeared to have been ‘lured’ to Moselle by Alex that night. We heard rumors that Maggie and Alex had been living apart before her death; that there may have been marital troubles afoot.”
Alex’s official stance on what happened that evening was that the whole family was already at the compound and that he was napping in the main residence while his wife and son went down to the dog kennels. But Matney’s reporting suggested otherwise.
“On the night of June 7, Alex reportedly asked Maggie to leave Edisto and meet him at Moselle and accompany him to visit his ailing father and mother,” Matney wrote.
It makes complete sense that Matney felt the need to launch a podcast to cover the Murdaugh family saga — it truly feels like a never-ending crime story. And these tidbits are a mere fraction of the shocking, well-reported details Matney offers in her memoir, Blood on Their Hands. Her book is now available everywhere. Talk about the ultimate stocking stuffer for the true-crime fan in your life.
