Alex Murdaugh Is Expected to Be Charged With Killing Wife and Son, Lawyer Says

A long-running mystery over who killed the wife and son of Alex Murdaugh, an heir to a powerful legal dynasty in South Carolina, could be headed for a resolution this week as the police indicated they planned to indict Mr. Murdaugh in the murders, one of his lawyers said on Tuesday.

Mr. Murdaugh had already been facing an array of charges of fraud and theft that resulted in his arrest in September 2021 and a wave of subsequent indictments. But no one had been formally accused in the deaths of Maggie Murdaugh, 52, and Paul Murdaugh, 22, who were fatally shot at the family’s rural hunting estate in Islandton, about 65 miles west of Charleston.

One of Mr. Murdaugh’s lawyers, Jim Griffin, said state police investigators had informed some of Mr. Murdaugh’s relatives that they planned to seek an indictment against Mr. Murdaugh for the murders this week. A spokeswoman for the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, which has been investigating the case, would not confirm the lawyer’s account.

It was Mr. Murdaugh, sounding deeply shaken, who called 911 on the night of June 7, 2021, and told a dispatcher that he had returned home to find the bodies of his wife and son lying near a dog kennel on the family’s secluded estate, which sits far back from the road at the end of a winding driveway.

Mr. Murdaugh, 54, is a fourth-generation lawyer whose father, grandfather and great-grandfather each served as the top prosecutor in a district that reaches across a wide swath of the South Carolina Lowcountry region.

But in the months that followed the double-murder, Mr. Murdaugh’s life unraveled drastically.

The law firm founded by his ancestors reported that Mr. Murdaugh had been stealing money from the firm and fired him, after which, the police said, he concocted a bizarre scheme to have one of his distant cousins shoot him on a deserted road.

In the months since, he has been charged with stealing millions of dollars from clients and other people, including the family of a housekeeper for the Murdaugh family who died after falling on the steps of its home. Mr. Murdaugh admitted last month that he pocketed millions of dollars that was meant for the sons of the housekeeper.

Mr. Griffin said Mr. Murdaugh continued to proclaim his innocence.