A young woman has spoken out about the terrifying circumstances she found herself in after being apprehended by a family tied to many killings.
Morgan Doughty was dating 19-year-old Paul Murdaugh when he drunkenly crashed a boat in 2019 and murdered one of their pals, launching the Netflix three-part documentary film Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal.
On February 23, that year, a group of six Hampton, South Carolina, teens were out partying and drinking, but when it was time to go home, Paul insisted on driving them back on his boat.
However, in the early hours of the morning, he collided with a brook, throwing three of them into the frigid water.
While most people got it safely to shore, Mallory Beach went missing in the murky ocean, and her body was discovered eight days later after an exhaustive search.
Others aboard the boat had been seriously injured, including Morgan, who was taken to the hospital when rescue came.
Paul was not only drinking underage, but his blood alcohol level was also three times higher than the legal limit.
However, he was not given a sobriety test or even brought to jail in the immediate aftermath, prompting others to suspect he was given preferential treatment because he was a member of a strong family in the region.
The Murdaugh family was a famous American legal family in South Carolina’s Low Country region, with three members of the family serving as district attorneys in the area continuously from 1920 to 2006.
However, in 2014, numerous members of one branch of the family got implicated in investigations for murders, corruption, and other alleged crimes, including insurance fraud, tearing the family apart.
At the centre of these allegations was Richard ‘Alex’ Murdaugh, Paul’s father, who is currently on trial for killing Paul, his youngest son, as well as his wife Maggie.
The pair were found shot at the family’s hunting lodge in June 2021.
The next month Alex was charged with their murders, and the month after that his ‘house of cards began to collapse’ after he was accused of embezzling from his legal firm.
After further investigations from police, it was calculated he may have stolen $8 million (£6.6 million) from clients.
While Morgan had broken up with Paul after the fatal boating accident, she speaks in the documentary about concerning behaviour in the years leading up to the crash, in which she claims he regularly drunk to excess and would become irritable and, in some cases, violent.
Several of their common acquaintances also support her allegation, claiming that Paul was given the moniker ‘Timmy,’ which they called him when his demeanour altered when drinking.
It was said that his parents would also turn a blind eye to his drinking, while his elder brother Buster provided Paul his driver’s licence on the day of the party so that he could buy booze.
In the documentary the family’s privileged position is explained, with one community member saying that while they ‘were the law’ because of how entrenched the family was in the local judicial system, they also at times believed they were ‘above it’.
The Murdaughs were initially linked to a murder in 2015, when teenager Stephen Smith was discovered dead from blunt force injuries on a road, with the case declared a hit-and-run with no suspects apprehended.
Smith was openly homosexual, and there were rumours he was in a relationship with Buster, as numerous individuals say in the documentary, but the Murdaughs were conservative and would have likely not embraced their son’s sexuality.
Although there was speculation that Stephen’s family was involved in his murder, and an inquiry into his death was launched in June 2021, no charges have been filed in this case to yet.
However, three years after his death, the Murdaughs were also besieged by the loss of their long-time maid, Gloria Satterfield, who suffered a severe head injury when she tumbled down their home’s steps and died of complications involving a stroke.
While the family claimed that their dogs tripped her, an autopsy was never done to support their claims.
Despite the fact that Satterfield’s two kids were eventually given an insurance claim for her death, Alex was then accused of stealing the $4.3 million (£3.5 million) that they were owed.
Authorities declared in 2021 that they will launch a criminal probe into her death.
Morgan described how upsetting it was to learn what the family had been related to, and how there was a specific occurrence that signalled something was wrong.
‘This girl had messaged me on Facebook letting me know she had reason to believe that it could have been Paul or Buster who had killed Stephen,’ she recalled.
However, a startling reaction from all four family members was concerning.
‘So, Alex, Maggie, Buster, Paul and I were all at their home and were sitting in the kitchen and had just finished eating and I asked them why this girl was saying these things and they laughed it off and then they said “we wouldn’t kill that f*****,’ she said.
‘Looking back now that was the first red flag that I ignored, but I thought, surely these people wouldn’t just murder someone.’
Alex Murdaugh was facing a total of 106 grand jury criminal accusations as of December 2022, including financial fraud, narcotics, and murder.
He is also a defendant in a wrongful death litigation involving Mallory Beach.
Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal is streaming from Wednesday on Netflix.
Source My Celebrity Life.