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Renowned attorney Alex Murdaugh has been found guilty of double murder in a trial that has sparked widespread interest in the United States. A jury found Thursday in Walterboro, South Carolina that the 54-year-old shot his wife and son. The lawyer faces a life sentence.

It took the jury less than three hours to reach a decision. With their guilty verdict, they followed the allegations of the public prosecutor’s office. The lawyer, who belongs to a prominent legal family, shot and killed his 52-year-old wife Maggie and 22-year-old son Paul on June 7, 2021, at the family’s hunting estate in South Carolina.

“The evidence is overwhelming,” Judge Clifton Newman said. He announced that he wanted to impose the sentence on Friday. Murdaugh faces a minimum of 30 years in prison for each of the two murders, but he could also be sentenced to life in prison for both crimes. “Today’s verdict proves that no one – and no one really – is above the law,” said prosecutor Alan Wilson.

Millions of dollars stolen for opioid addiction

The defendant himself showed little reaction to the sentencing verdict. After the jury verdict, he was led out of the courtroom in handcuffs. The lawyer had alerted the police in 2021 and said he had found the bodies. However, he later came under suspicion himself – and was eventually charged with double murder in July 2022. The trial generated huge interest in the United States, with television broadcasting from the courtroom almost daily.

Murdaugh has denied the crimes. However, he had to admit in court that he had lied about his presence at the crime scene. His voice can be heard on a cell phone video recorded by his son Paul shortly before the fatal shooting.

Murdaugh had previously stolen millions of dollars from his law firm, from clients, and even from the family of a former maid who collected insurance money after the woman’s death in a fall. He needed the money, among other things, to pay for his opioid addiction.

The killer had to kill Murdaugh

According to the prosecution, Murdaugh in the summer of 2021 feared that he would soon be exposed – and wanted to avoid this by killing his wife and son and buying time for himself. Then a few months after the double murder, he paid a man to kill him and his other son collected $10 million in life insurance. Murdaugh was only wounded by the shot and survived. He admitted to the detectives that he had paid the perpetrator.

The lawyer’s trial, which began in January, attracted huge media attention in the US, with news broadcasts from the courtroom almost daily. The streaming service Netflix recently released a much-watched series titled “The Murdaugh Murders: Scandal in the Southern States.”

It is also about another case: the murdered son Paul had been involved in a boating accident two years earlier that killed a 19-year-old. Paul Murdaugh was charged with driving the boat while intoxicated. (t online)