In 2023, the South Carolina lawyer Alex Murdaugh was convicted of murdering his wife, Maggie, and 22-year-old son Paul. The pair had been shot at the family’s hunting estate; Murdaugh claimed to have discovered the bodies after returning from a visit to his mother.It’s not hard to see why the case “gripped America”, said Robbie Millen in The Times. It involved the “privileged and powerful” – the Murdaughs were big cheeses in the South Carolina Lowcountry – and the man himself, known as “Big Red”, didn’t seem the murdering type: he appeared to be a “loving husband and doting father” with a charming “down-home manner”.
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