Before pronouncing the sentence, he spoke at length to Alex Murdaugh in a calm tone which was all the more bitter, saying his incomprehension in the face of the “duplicity” and the lies of the lawyer.
The latter, handcuffed and dressed in a beige prison uniform, again claimed his innocence. His son Buster was in the room.
Alex Murdaugh, 54, was accused of stealing huge sums from his law firm, friends and even his housekeeper’s son, and suspected of shooting his relatives to avoid exposure.
If he admitted these thefts, intended according to him to feed a costly addiction to opiates and to compensate for bad investments, he never admitted the double murder.
According to the prosecution, he shot and killed with two separate rifles his wife Maggie, 52, and their youngest son Paul, 22, on June 7, 2021 in Colleton County, South Carolina, near the kennel of their sprawling property, called Moselle, where men liked to hunt wild pigs.
The case fascinated the United States, where all the media, including the most serious, dissected the life of this opulent family, proud of its three generations of local prosecutors and judges, as well as the dizzying fall of the father.