5 Lessons from the Murdaugh Murders
A Southern Scandal + After Hours Pop Culture Edition Part 1
Alright, alright, alright. Dropping in your inbox a few days late (don’t blame me, blame the flea infestation from animals we don’t own, the attempted robbery, and the flooring that got delayed)1. Bless my little heart, and yours. When the Psalmist is talking about Earth and the fullness thereof, he got us drawing blanks.
My friend Ito, a fellow lover of true crime, told me about the Murdaugh Murders podcast. I sopped it up with a biscuit. My passion for true crime started at a young age, thanks to all the women in my family and Southern culture at large. Bitter Blood got me, hook, line, and sinker. I am fascinated with human behavior — why we do the things we do — and how a particular context can drive almost anyone to do anything.
So when season two of the Murdaugh Murders popped up on my Netflix recommendations (which how? How did we get here from Love is Blind, Great British Bake Off, and Hack My Home?), I devoured it over the holiday weekend. And then thought, a good pop culture series might be just what we need. I plan to DELIVER some takeaways on how not to live in denial until you SNAP like Alex Murdaugh.
Side note: Alex is pronounced ALEC. Murdaugh is pronounced MURDOCK—The most southern sh*t ever. My granny Dodson's name is Ina, but people called her HANNAH. My Auntie Miriam was called MARION.
Here's a quick recap for those who don't want to watch, are mad I'm even talking about this, or are crime-obsessed but haven't watched. The Murdaugh men served as the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Circuit solicitors for the five-county area of South Carolina's Lowcountry region within the 14th Judicial district from 1920 to 2006. A solicitor is the same as a chief prosecuting attorney, so these folks are powerful enough that the county is nicknamed Murdaugh County.
God only knows what kind of crimes were already happening, but since the Voting Rights Act didn't pass until the late sixties (don't get me started on jury pools2) and, women couldn't get a bank account until 1974, and poor people are still up a creek with no paddle, I suppose we already know that the court system didn't favor anyone who didn't like these men.
Well, Randolph is on the end, and he had a few sons, one of them Alex, also a lawyer in the family dynasty, married to Maggie, with whom he had two wild childs, Buster and Paul. Paul was a raging teenage drunk who crashed a boat full of 19-year-olds and killed a classmate, Mallory. Because of his parents, he got off scot-free, but the public outcry (including the podcast) opened up Pandora's box. The family's housekeeper of 20 years, Gloria, "tripped over the dogs," fell down, and died on the front porch steps. The tragic death of Stephen Smith was connected to Buster Murdaugh, but no one ever questioned him or held them accountable.
Then, Paul and his mother, Maggie, are murdered on one of their properties after supper together as a family, cooked by their new (very loving) housekeeper, Blanca. And supposedly, Alex was visiting his mom, which he was, but for less time than he told the police. He's also hooked on drugs and embezzling millions of dollars from his law firm and an insurance company. Long story short, Alex is found at the scene of the crime thanks to a video from Paul five minutes before the murders took place and he's convicted by a diverse jury of his peers (!!!) and given two consecutive life sentences by Judge Clifton Newman.
Whew, it's wild. Now, let's get to it…
5 Lessons from the Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal
#1 Nobody is untouchable even if generational power puts you on another planet.
Cover-ups, calls to law enforcement friends, clean-ups at crime scenes, my word, these people were ruthless about their reputation. Grandaddies and a daddy in the court system, knowing every judge, every lawyer, every person on the jury, makes family members untouchable for a time. And that is the beginning of the end, even for the wealthiest, most well-resourced/connected men and women, because if you value image over integrity, you’ll ruin your life and the lives of those you love. Like Rome, the Murdaugh Dynasty wasn’t built in a day, but when it got top-heavy, it went down faster than a knife fight in a phone booth. The quicker we recognize that power is a drug and when fueled by power and greed, that thing grows like a cancer. Don’t let it kill you.
#2 Vulnerable women are the bravest women.
I cried listening to the testimonies and stories of Alex’s mom’s caregiver, Shelley Smith, and Alex and Maggie’s housekeeper, Blanca Turrubiate-Simpson. Both women, visibly terrified and vulnerable to the power structures in their workplace, were pressured to give false testimony by Alex. Instead, they bravely took the stand and told the truth. As always, truth lives at the margins, and we’d do well to listen to the people who serve people in power. Vulnerable women are our canaries in the coal mine. Let them speak, and if we’ve got half a brain in our heads, we’ll listen.
#3 Feeding off people’s pain and trauma is a sickness. Get some help.
There’s a scene in the series where everything in the home where Paul and Maggie were murdered gets auctioned off. People walk through the house with glee, talking enthusiastically with the directors about their purchases and bids. It gave me the heebie-jeebies. Listen, we love a good estate sale. However, this niche thing, unique to America, where people try to marry Charles Manson and buy Maggie’s vacuum to see if anything is interesting in the debris, is a bridge too far. Living, breathing people died. And yes, I’m aware that this one is hypocritical, given that I love the true crime genre — fair critique.
#4 Teach your children not to get on the boat.
I cried as I watched the kids on the docuseries share about how drunk they all were the night of the boat crash. There was a moment when they were afraid to get on the boat because Paul Murdaugh was irate and scared, but peer pressure kicked in, and they all got on. I thanked God for two things:
My mom drove home to us that she didn’t care what time of night, how drunk we were, or how stupid a choice we were in the middle of to call her, and she’d come with no judgment and no immediate consequences. I trusted that and knew she’d rather have us alive than dead.
Her fierce instruction and the hyper-vigilance that runs my life have kept me alive. Sometimes, I just didn’t do certain things — refused to get in a car with someone, pressured into a party I didn’t want to go to, or followed friends off a cocaine cliff.
I did my fair share of stupid things, but I’m still here because of those instructions and my instincts. I really want to teach my kids how to resist peer pressure, to come to us no matter what they’ve done, to follow that gut feeling burrowing in their belly saying “no,” to resist drunk drivers and sweet talkers… to not get on the boat.
#5 “The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.”
How beautiful that a black female caregiver, a Latina housekeeper, and a black male judge stood as carriers of justice in this story. A story that started at a time when women could barely vote, and nonwhite people faced discriminatory practices that took away their legal right to participate in democracy and justice. Only white men ordered the structure and policies that governed society. We didn’t need more proof that true diversity leads to wholeness in creation and community, but here’s yet another case that proves it so. The more we dismantle the white and male gaze and embrace a communal functionality that allows for human flourishing across a wide variety of beliefs, the healthier and happier we will be.
Alright, there’s my takeaways from the Murdaugh Murders. Did you watch or listen to the series? What stood out to you? Would love to hear your take!
I’ll be back in your inbox Thursday with some Barbie commentary. Yes, I’m hella late seeing it in theaters, but weird Barbie really spoke to me. Let’s have a good time with pop culture for the next month or so in the After Hours neighborhood…
Grateful for you — Ash
We’re fine, promise! Our neighbors are incredible and so are the folks doing our flooring… and the folks who did an emergency flea bomb. lol.
https://eji.org/report/race-and-the-jury/how-juries-are-selected/#jury-pools
Enjoyed your thoughts... obviously you are a child of the South..as am I...I actually grew up in Walterboro and knew of the characters in this sad tale...I don't process to know the difference between a psychopath or a sociopath...but he is one or the other