South Carolina authorities announced Wednesday that they had opened an investigation into the death of a housekeeper at the home of Alex Murdaugh in 2018, a prominent lawyer who is at the center of multiple investigations after his wife and son they would have shot dead at the family home. at home in June.
The death of housewife Gloria Satterfield, 57, was attributed in court documents to a “trip and fall” accident, but Angela Topper, a forensic officer in Hampton County, SC, said the death never he was not reported to his office and no autopsy was performed. done.
The announcement by the South Carolina law enforcement division followed another impressive development on Tuesday, when the agency said Murdaugh had asked a former client to kill him next to a road in early May. ‘this month for his eldest son to receive $ 10. payment of millions of insurance.
Murdaugh survived when he was shot in the head and fabricated a false story about the passing of a passerby, a story his lawyers now admit was false. Police on Tuesday arrested the former client, who is said to have shot him, Curtis Edward Smith, 61, and accused him of trying to help Mr. Murdaugh in the suicide, among other crimes.
Dick Harpootlian, Mr. Murdaugh said Wednesday he hoped Mr. Murdaugh would be arrested in the next few days or weeks for his role in the scheme, but he was adamant that Mr. Murdaugh had not been involved in the murder. of his wife and son in June. He said Murdaugh had invented the suicide plan because he was suffering from depression while trying to stop an oxycodone addiction.
None of Mr. Murdaugh’s attorneys responded to requests for comment on the new investigation into Mrs. Satterfield’s death.
Mr. Murdaugh is called a “co-defendant” in Mr. Murdaugh’s indictment. Smith; a police spokesman, Tommy Crosby, said without detail that police hoped to file more charges in the case.
The case has already caught attention because of the powerful history of the Murdaugh family in the low country of South Carolina, where family members served as top prosecutors in a region of five counties for more than eight decades. . Murdaugh was a prominent lawyer in his family law firm until he was fired the day before he was shot, after leaders said they had discovered he had taken millions of dollars from the firm and its clients.
The central issue of who killed Mr. Murdaugh’s wife, Maggie, and the son of a college student, Paul, who were found shot at his home in June, has yet to be resolved.
The new investigation into Mrs Satterfield’s death came after lawyers representing her two children said the children had not received any $ 505,000 agreement that their previous lawyer had reached with Mr Murdaugh.
In this case, Satterfield’s death was attributed to injuries sustained in a “trip and fall.” But Mrs. Topper, a local coroner, said the death had been “natural” on Satterfield’s death certificate, which he said was “inconsistent” with an accidental fall.
The sons, Tony Satterfield and Brian Harriott, now in their twenties, did not participate in the negotiations or sign any settlement agreement, the children’s new lawyers, Ronnie Richter and Eric Bland, said in a lawsuit filed Wednesday . The lawsuit named Murdaugh and the law firm and attorney who had represented the children as defendants.
The new lawyers said Mr Murdaugh had introduced Mrs Satterfield’s children to one of the lawyers representing them in the agreement, but that they had not been aware of the lawyer’s closeness to Mr Murdaugh.
Richter said in an interview that he did not expect state police to open a criminal investigation, but was pleased that Mrs. Satterfield’s death was deepening.
“I don’t remember any case that requires more sunlight than this,” he said. “Where it comes from, it’s good.”