Disgraced South Carolina lawyer and convicted murderer Alex Murdaugh will appear in Beaufort County court Tuesday to be sentenced for his financial crimes.
Murdaugh, who is serving two life terms in prison for the 2021 murders of his wife and son, agreed to plead guilty to 22 counts — including breach of trust, money laundering, forgery, and tax evasion — in exchange for a 27-year prison sentence.
"I agree that I wrongly took all of that money, Your Honor, and did all of those crimes," Murdaugh said during a Nov. 17 hearing.
The financial crimes include Murdaugh's scheme to steal $4 million in life insurance funds from the estate of his late housekeeper, Gloria Satterfield.
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In February 2018, the Murdaugh family reported that Satterfield tripped and fell on some steps at Moselle, the Murdaughs' estate, and she later died in a hospital.
An autopsy was never conducted, and Satterfield's death certificate said she died of natural causes, which her family and Hampton County Coroner Angela Topper later disputed as her injuries were inconsistent with that conclusion.
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Prosecutors say Murdaugh secured $4.3 million in insurance settlements for Satterfield's family after her death, but the former attorney kept the money for himself, never alerting the family that he had secured a payout.
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"In the Satterfield case, he stole every dime, every dime," South Carolina prosecutor Creighton Waters said during the Nov. 17 proceeding.
Her sons were able to recover a multi-million-dollar settlement from their mother's death that was rightfully theirs but wanted to hold the former personal injury lawyer accountable for his crimes during a trial that was set to begin Monday.
Instead, Murdaugh took the plea deal.
He previously pleaded guilty to 22 counts of financial fraud and money laundering in federal court.
His defense attorneys, Jim Griffin and Dick Harpootlian, have filed a motion to overturn the guilty verdict in Murdaugh's double-murder case based on allegations that Colleton County court clerk Becky Hill had tampered with jurors by trying to sway them toward a conviction. She has denied the allegations.
