Murdaugh’s lawyers have asked a judge to toss out the $4.3 million legal decision since the claims were approved by insurance companies based on the false claims Murdaugh had made about his pet dogs tripping housekeeper Gloria Satterfield.
In 2015, Stephen Smith's body was found about 15 minutes from the family home of Alex Murdaugh, though the convicted lawyer's son Buster has steadfastly rejected any speculation that he was somehow involved in the death.
Clifton Newman, the judge who presided over Alex Murdaugh's double murder trial, said earlier this week that he's been told that people who kill will "never be able to get over the moment in time they took that person’s life."
The Murdaugh's "Moselle" estate has sold for $3.9 million, much of which will go to parties suing the family's estate. A Georgia auction house also sold off the family's effects, with the couch Alex Murdaugh claimed to have napped on the night of his wife and son's murders selling for $36,000.
Eight years after the body of 19-year-old Stephen Smith was found on a road in Hampton County, South Carolina, just 15 miles from the Murdaugh family home, authorities are investigating the death as a homicide.
"I have tried my best to ignore the vicious rumors about my involvement in Stephen Smith’s tragic death that continue to be published in the media as I grieve over the brutal murders of my mother and brother,” Buster Murdaugh said.
Among the legal issues Alex Murdaugh faces after being convicted of the murders of his wife and youngest son is the upcoming trial in a wrongful death suit involving Mallory Beach, a 19-year-old killed in a boating accident.
