Convicted killer Alex Murdaugh made a shocking
confession in newly released federal court documents. Here's the latest.
At 9:24 a.m. on February 2nd, 2018,
Maggie Murdaugh called 911. She told the emergency dispatcher:
"My housekeeper has fallen and her head is bleeding. I cannot get her up."
Gloria Satterfield lay bleeding from a head wound at the Murdaugh
mansion on the Moselle estate in South Carolina. In the minutes that followed,
Maggie and then her husband, Alex, became testy about all the questions they were asked.
Satterfield, a 57-year-old woman who had worked for the high-powered lawyer and his
family for more than 20 years, died from her injuries 24 days later. Alex alleged
Satterfield had tripped over one of the family's dogs, fell backward, and smashed her head on the
front stairs. But that was apparently a lie — just one of the many spun by Alex, who is
currently serving a life sentence for murdering his wife and 22-year-old son, Paul, in June 2021.
In federal court documents filed on May 1st, 2013, Alex Murdaugh admitted he'd
made up the story to guarantee an insurance payout in the case. The documents state:
"No dogs were involved in the fall of Gloria Satterfield on February 2nd,
2018. After Ms. Satterfield's death, Defendant invented Ms. Satterfield's purported statement
that dogs caused her fall to force his insurers to make a settlement payment,
and he stated that she was not on the property to perform work."
The filings are part of an insurance fraud suit brought by Nautilus,
the company that paid out $4 million on the claim. The money, meant for Satterfield's
adult children, allegedly went into the pocket of Murdaugh and others involved in the scheme.
This is just one of the dozens of financial crimes the ex-lawyer and convicted killer has
been charged with. Police and prosecutors said it was the forthcoming revelations about his
financial crimes that led to Murdaugh killing his wife and son on June 7th,
2021, in order to buy time and sympathy for himself. Instead, the whole affair threw open
the doors to reveal years of shady dealings and suspicious deaths connected to the Murdaughs.
What the court filings don't reveal, however, is what actually happened to
Gloria Satterfield that morning. The coroner never performed an autopsy. In September 2021,
the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division opened an investigation into
Satterfield's death and the next June sought permission from Satterfield's
family to exhume her body. Eric Bland, an attorney for the heirs, said at the time:
"We do not know when it is being planned
or if it has been scheduled. We are supposed to be part of the process."
In March 2023, one of Satterfield's sons, Tony, appeared on NewsNation and told Chris
Cuomo that he wanted the body exhumed just in case there was any foul play involved.
"Do you believe there may have been?"
"No, I do not."
"But you just wanna be sure."
"Yes."
After Gloria's death, Alex Murdaugh had taken the lead on ensuring that the sons
would receive money via a wrongful death lawsuit — but he never followed through.
An order from September 2021 suggested Gloria's two adult sons should have
received $2.7 million from the suit. This obviously never happened, but they have
since won $7.5 million in compensation. Eric Bland said of Murdaugh's alleged actions:
"In my 33 years of being a lawyer, I've never seen a larger breach of trust,
a more concerted effort by lawyers and individuals involved to enrich
one person [...] at [the] expense of needy clients who are owed fiduciary duties."
For his part, Murdaugh says the Satterfields received more than $7.5 million from the wrongful
death suit. His court filings claim that, since the insurance claims were fraudulent,
Nautilus should be going after the Satterfield family as well. Bland later took to Twitter to
point out that the money his clients received didn't come from Nautilus, however. Importantly,
he also discounted Alex Murdaugh's new story about how Gloria died. As Bland told The Daily Mail:
"Are you going to believe anything that comes out of the mouth of a
convicted double murderer, fraudster and liar?"