The Devil at His Elbow

The Devil at His Elbow

Chapter One

The accused man sat in the same courtroom where he and his father and grandfather and great-grandfather had accused so many others, sending some to their death for crimes less heinous than the charges he faced. Alex Murdaugh had inherited his forebears’ power and prowess and then squandered it, the work of a hundred years washed away in blood. At first, the deputies he’d known as friends exchanged pleasantries when they ferried him to and from jail. Now, several weeks into the trial, they tightened the cuffs a click more than necessary.

In Colleton County, a hardscrabble corner of South Carolina’s Lowcountry, the courtroom had always been considered grand, with its mahogany benches and brass chandeliers suspended from a soaring ceiling. It had been designed by the same architect who created the Washington Monument and was crafted to instill a hushed sense of reverence. The front of the courtroom was dominated by a massive dark wood edifice; this was the judge’s bench, but the term felt too paltry to describe the structure, which was both imposing and bulletproof. On the wall behind the bench hung the state seal, the motto every child in the state memorized in school: dum spiro spero.

While I breathe, I hope.

Portraits of stern-­faced court officials, most of them long dead, gazed down from within gilded frames. One of the paintings, a rendering of Alex’s legendary grandfather, had been taken down before the trial on the order of the judge, who did not want the jury to feel the old man’s eyes upon them as they decided his grandson’s fate. In the portrait’s place, a pale rectangle remained on the wall, a hint of missing history.

The judge had been acquainted with Alex’s grandfather and had been a contemporary of Alex’s father decades earlier when they were fellow prosecutors. But it was Alex, the gregarious trial lawyer, whom the judge knew best. At least, the judge had thought so. After several weeks of testimony, the judge was no longer sure he had ever known the man at all.

In the early weeks of the trial, Alex kept up appearances, covering his shackles with a folded blazer, freshening his breath with Tic Tacs, trading fist bumps with the bailiffs, arranging for his family to bring him a John Grisham novel so he’d have something to read in his holding cell. Even on trial for his life, he treated the courtroom as his duchy. He whispered to his lawyers and smiled at the jurors and stared down the prosecutors as though he could will them into silence.

Some of the most damning testimony came from those who knew him best: his family’s housekeeper, his wife’s sister, another lawyer who had grown close to Alex and then recoiled after seeing the ruthlessness at his friend’s core. Once the lawyer understood, he had vowed to force Alex to a reckoning.

To counter the damage, the defense team showed the jury a video of Alex’s family singing at his birthday party a week before their world ended. Staring at the shimmering footage, Alex began to rock back and forth, his shoulders jerking, his jaw working furiously, a torrent of motion. Under their voices, his lawyers told him to tone it down.

“This f***ing rocking,” one muttered during a break. “It’s like he’s catatonic.”

Then came the morning when Alex took the stand, defying his legal team’s advice. As a veteran trial lawyer, he knew the risks of testifying on his own behalf. But the desire to tell his story was too strong. He was a Murdaugh. The lawyers in his family had spent decades shaping testimony to suit their needs, rearranging reality not just in court but in every square mile of their territory. It was his right to speak in this courtroom.

He put his hand on the Bible and swore to tell the truth, then settled into the witness box, adjusting the microphone for his height. The wooden chair beneath him creaked.

From an evidence box on the carpet, his lawyer picked up a shotgun.

“On June seventh, 2021, did you take this gun or any gun like it and shoot your son Paul in the chest in the feed room in your property off of Moselle Road?”

“No,” Alex said. “I did not.”

The lawyer held up the shotgun again.

“Did you take this gun, or any gun like it, and blow your son’s brains out on June seventh, or any day, or any time?”

Alex squinted, his jaw working front to back.

“No,” he said, more emphatically. “I did not.”

The lawyer dropped the gun back into the evidence box with a thud that made spectators jump. Then he picked up a sleek black tactical rifle.

“Did you take a three-­hundred-­caliber Blackout, such as this, and fire it into your wife Maggie’s leg, torso, or any part of her body?”

Alex nodded but said “No, I did not.”

“Did you shoot a three-­hundred-­caliber Blackout into her head, causing her death?”

“I didn’t shoot my wife or my son, any time, ever.” He nodded again. “I would never intentionally do anything to hurt either one of them, ever.”

The lawyer looked at his client. “Do you love Paul?”

“Did I love him? Like no other.”

“Do you love Maggie?”

“More than anything.”

Alex described that last summer evening with his family, sketching every detail so the jurors could see the picture in their minds. How he and Paul had ridden around the property together in the fading light. How they had inspected fields of corn and sunflowers, looked for signs of wild hogs, and picked up a pistol for a quick round of target practice. How Paul had laughed when Alex couldn’t make a sapling stand straight. They had returned to the house at dusk just as Maggie pulled up, he said. Their housekeeper had left them dinner on the stove, cube steak and rice and green beans, and they’d eaten quickly. Afterward Paul had gone down to the kennels to check on one of the dogs, and Maggie had gone with him. Alex said he had taken a nap, then gone to see his mother. When he returned to Moselle, he said, he had found them lying on the ground near the kennels.

As he tried to describe the blood and the stillness of the bodies, Alex began coughing and bobbing his chin toward his chest. For five seconds he was silent, then five seconds more. His face, always ruddy, was now fully flushed. His nose was running.

“It was so bad,” he said.

Another long pause, this time lasting nearly a minute. Alex twisted in his seat, seeming to look for something on the floor.

“Can I have some water?”

His lawyer passed him a bottle and Alex took a long drink.

For more than a year after that night, Alex had sworn to police that he had stayed at the house before leaving to check on his mother. Now, in court, he acknowledged that he had in fact joined his wife and son at the kennels for a few minutes before going to his mother’s house. Why, his lawyer asked, had he deceived investigators for so long?

Alex paused before answering. He had begun folding into himself.

“Oh,” he said finally with a shrug and a sigh, “what a tangled web we weave.”

During cross-­examination, the lead prosecutor grilled Alex about his pattern of deceit. How he had lied to the first officer to arrive at the scene that night, and then to the captain who arrived soon after, and then to the two detectives who had tried to comfort him, patting his shoulder and offering words of condolence. He had lied to them all and even to his own attorneys about the truth of that night.

Alex stayed calm even as the prosecutor forced him to confirm all the other lies he’d told through the years, to his own family and to his closest friends and the clients who had counted on him. The quadriplegic deaf teenager from whom he had embezzled a million dollars. The young motherless sisters he had left destitute, one of them living out of her car. Had he felt entitled to betray their trust?

“No,” Alex said. He had found ways, he said, to live with his sins. He’d told himself he would pay the money back; he was only taking what he deserved; his clients would never miss it.

“To be able to look yourself in the mirror,” he said, “you lie to yourself.”

The prosecutor wanted to know how Alex had gotten these vulnerable people to trust him. Surely he had looked each of them in the eye as he stole their money.

“Correct?”

The witness had become visibly uncomfortable.

“Answer my question, yes or no,” said the prosecutor, “and then you can explain. I’ll let you explain all day long.”

Alex said he had betrayed many people and regretted it.