This Is What The New Season Of 'Dexter' Has In Common With The Real-Life Murdaugh Murders

Dexter Morgan, erstwhile (or trying to be!) vigilante serial killer is back after 10 years in a new Showtime limited series called "Dexter: New Blood." 

In the first episode, we find Dexter has traded the swampy heat of Miami for the frigid snow of upstate New York where he's living under an assumed name (Jim Lindsay), dating the local police chief, Angela Bishop (played by Julia Jones), and still trying to fight off the urges of his "dark passenger" – it's been a decade since Dexter has killed. And while he seems happy in his new life and his new relationship, he can't seem to escape his past or his deadly compulsions. 

Michael C. Hall as Dexter Photo: Showtime

And this is where it gets interesting for "Dexter" fans and true crime buffs. Dexter encounters Matt Caldwell, a spoiled oil fortune heir who likes to hunt with semi-automatic rifle. But what truly gets Dexter's attention is Caldwell's involvement years earlier in a boat crash that left at least one young man with terrible scars and cost five others their lives. And as it turns out, Caldwell's billionaire father paid his son's friend to take the fall. 

This probably sounds familiar to anyone who has been following the saga of South Carolina's Murdaugh family. In February of 2019, Paul Murdaugh, part of a 100-year-old local legal dynasty was allegedly operating his family's boat while intoxicated, with five friends aboard. The boat hit a bridge piling and 19-year-old Mallory Beach was ejected. Her body was found seven days later. 

Murdaugh was awaiting trial for felony charges of boating while under the influence when he and his mother, Margaret, 52, were found gunned down on the family's sprawling hunting property in June. 

Since then, the Murdaugh saga has spiraled into a story of alleged murder, greed, addiction, attempted suicide ... and more. It remains to be seen what happens on the rest of the season of "Dexter: New Blood", but it's possible that, in this case at least, fact could be stranger than fiction. Indeed, fact and fiction have collided when it comes to 'Dexter', before. 

In 2008, a "Dexter" fan, named Mark Twitchell posed as a woman on an internet dating site, then killed and dismembered the man who fell for his catfishing scheme. He then wrote about the crime on the Facebook fan page he ran about the series. 

At the time, reporter Steve Lillebuen told the St. Alberta Journal, "The people who were reading his Facebook page were thinking it was just a Dexter fan and were not realizing his posts were actually referring to real life incidents. So there was a lot of, was it real, was it fake, and where is that line?"

You can watch "Alex Mudaugh. Death. Deception. Power." here or on Peacock starting January 6.