OAN Staff Brooke Mallory
12:24 PM – Tuesday, October 15, 2024
The lawsuit against Alex Murdaugh was resolved by the family of a teenager who died in a boat accident involving Murdaugh’s now-deceased child. According to the prosecution, the incident allegedly incited the disgraced South Carolina lawyer to murder his wife and their youngest son, who caused the boat to crash.
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“The agreement by an insurer to pay the $500,000 policy Alex Murdaugh had on the boat ends the wrongful death suit that ultimately pried open Murdaugh’s finances and laid bare his schemes to steal millions from his clients and his law firm,” AP News reported.
Following reports regarding the boat collision that Paul Murdaugh, Alex’s youngest son, was responsible for, after it collided with a bridge in Beaufort County in February 2019, the family of Mallory Beach, 19, filed a lawsuit against the Murdaugh family and others. After the incident, Beach passed away in the hospital and multiple people were injured as well.
Paul Murdaugh was charged with felony boating under the influence. He was also 19-years-old at the time of the boat collision, and his blood alcohol content was over 0.28%, which is more than three times the legal limit, according to investigators.
In addition to lawsuits against a bar that served Paul Murdaugh liquor shortly before the crash, a family that hosted an oyster roast that the group on the boat attended, and Paul Murdaugh’s older brother, Buster, whose ID he used to purchase the beer, Beach’s family has already received over $15 million from a settlement with the Parker’s Kitchen chain of convenience stores, among others.
Last summer, the legal matter could not be settled due to a problem with Progressive, the boat’s insurer. According to court documents, Progressive refused to pay until Alex Murdaugh was removed from the Beach family’s lawsuit as a defendant.
In an order filed on Monday, Judge Daniel Hall stated that Beach’s family consented to the case’s termination and the insurer paid the $500,000 after special receivers guaranteed that all of Murdaugh’s assets had been distributed.
According to court documents, the other injured boat passengers have also reached settlements in their legal disputes with Murdaugh and other involved parties in the crash.
For the June 2021 shooting deaths of his wife, Maggie, and son, Paul, at their Colleton County home, 56-year-old Alex Murdaugh is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole. He is contesting his murder convictions and has denied killing them.
However, he will still stay behind bars even if his murder convictions are overturned. Murdaugh acknowledged embezzling approximately $12 million from his family’s legal firm, as well as from a trust fund for children whose parents perished in a collision, and from clients, such as one man who suffered quadriplegia following a collision. He received a 40-year sentence in federal prison.
Prosecutors believe that Murdaugh was afraid that if his statement was investigated, it would reveal that he had embezzled millions from customers and his law firm, and that the murders were part of a deliberate and nefarious scheme to buy him more time to get his finances in order and end the wrongful death lawsuit related to the boat accident.
His family’s long-standing power over Hampton County, where they dominated the criminal and civil courts for decades, as well as the weaknesses in their hold on their rural empire were both demonstrated by the lawsuit, which became known in the true crime community as the “Boat Case.”
Paul Murdaugh and his father also attempted to speak with the badly injured teenager alone in the emergency room, according to nurses at the hospital where they were transported. A nurse claimed that the family seemed to be attempting to persuade the girl that someone other than Paul Murdaugh was responsible for the boat crash.
During Alex Murdaugh’s murder trial, Beach’s attorney, Mark Tinsley, testified and maintained that he wanted him to pay at least $10 million. Murdaugh’s attorney countered and claimed that he was now broke and “might be able” to scrounge together $1 million.
That didn’t make sense, Tinsley claimed, given Murdaugh’s local reputation and affluence as a prominent lawyer. Tinsley requested all of Murdaugh’s financial documents for the lawsuit hearing, which was postponed after the murders.
According to investigators, Alex Murdaugh killed his wife, Maggie, 52, after “four or five rifle shots” outside their home, and his son, Paul, with “two blasts.”
Alex Murdaugh claimed to police that after a quick visit to see his sick mother, he discovered the bodies and immediately dialed 911. When investigators arrived at the scene, Murdaugh expressed curiosity about whether the murders were motivated by resentment toward his son over the boat accident, insinuating that it was someone else who took part in the crimes.
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