A former client of Alex Murdaugh was arrested Tuesday and charged with “assisted suicide” and assault during the shooting and wounding of prominent South Carolina lawyer this month, the latest twist in a mysterious series of crimes that have been intensely examined since June. when Mr. Murdaugh returned home to find his wife and son shot.
Former client Curtis Edward Smith, 61, was also charged with battery life, pointing to a gun, insurance fraud and selling methamphetamine, a state police agency said in a statement. Murdaugh’s lawyer did not respond to investigations into the arrest.
Murdaugh, 53, represented Mr. Smith in 2015 in a lawsuit that Mr. Smith had filed a lawsuit against a forest management company based in Charlotte, NC. He had also represented Mr. Smith in several other cases, including minor traffic violations.
Murdaugh called 911 from a rural highway in Hampton County, South Carolina on Sept. 4 to tell him his head had been shot, an injury police have described as a “superficial” fire wound. . Murdaugh told police he had stopped by the side of the road to inspect a flat tire when someone got into a pickup truck, asked if he had car problems and shot him in the head, he said. Murdaugh’s lawyer. .
A day earlier, Murdaugh had been evicted from his family law firm, which he said he discovered had misused millions of dollars. Murdaugh issued a statement apologizing to his family and colleagues and said he was entering rehab. It was an impressive fall for Mr. Murdaugh, who is part of a legal dynasty that has amassed powerful ties in the low country of South Carolina over the past century. His father, grandfather and great-grandfather were the top prosecutor in a region of five counties for more than eight decades, until 2006.
A spokeswoman for Mr. Murdaugh had vehemently denied that the roadside shooting had inflicted itself on him, saying he had suffered an entry and exit wound and a skull fracture.
The shooting came nearly three months after Murdaugh returned to his family’s large rural property in Islandton, SC, and discovered his wife, Maggie, and son Paul, a 22-year-old college student, by gunfire.
The murders, which remain unresolved, have drawn attention to the Murdaugh family’s checkered history in the region. At the time of his death, Paul Murdaugh was accused of crashing a drunken ship in 2019, killing Mallory Beach, a passenger, and injuring others.