The three-part series looks at the couple’s murders but also other deaths surrounding the Murdaugh family.
Here are some key points of the program:
Lots of smoke, but no convictions
The series links five bodies over six years to the Murdaughs: Maggie and Paul Murdaugh, Mallory Beach, Gloria Satterfield and Stephen Smith. But no one has been convicted for any of these deaths.
Maggie and Paul were shot on the family’s 1,772-acre hunting estate in Islandton, South Carolina on June 7, 2021. Mallory Beach, 19, died after Paul, while allegedly intoxicated, shot crashed a boat into a bridge in 2019. Gloria Satterfield helped maintain the family home for two decades before she tripped over Murdaugh’s dogs and fell down the stairs. Stephen Smith died in 2015 and, according to the docuseries, he may have had a relationship with Alex Murdaugh’s other son, Buster.
A constant throughout the series is the power dynamics at play and how authorities, whether explicitly educated or not, know messing with the Murdaughs is complicated. The last three generations of Murdaughs have been elected chief prosecutors in the Lowcountry.
“The Murdaughs were law and order here in the 14th Circuit,” said Hampton County Guardian editor Michael Dewitt Jr. “They ran both sides of the legal ledger.”
Prosecutors during the trial showed the jury that the Murdaughs were so close to law enforcement that Alex Murdaugh was given a badge and installed blue lights in his vehicle.
Everyone thinks Alex Murdaugh committed at least one criminal act
The series, while reaching out to family members who did not comment, has not shown a single person who believes Alex Murdaugh is completely innocent.
Murdaugh himself at trial admitted to committing financial crimes, claiming he stole from clients in his law firm.
The trial is not over and no verdict has been rendered.
Lowcountry folks still reckon with it all
Directors Julia Willoughby Nason and Jenner Furst — the same minds behind the docuseries hits “LuLaRich” and “Fyre Fraud” — quickly and systematically show the pain and trauma many still deal with in this area of South Carolina.
Tears flowed as friends and family remembered Beach, the 19-year-old woman who had died in the drunk boating accident a few years earlier. The series shows many people saying that even in the hospital, Alex Murdaugh was trying to blame another person on the boat, Connor Cook, for piloting it.
His father, Marty Cook, said his son feared the Murdaughs would kill the young man.
“I don’t think the story is about to be over, and, yeah, I’m a little nervous about sitting here and doing this right now,” Marty Cook told the camera .
People love the true crime genre
True crime content isn’t new, but an overabundance of streaming juggernauts all in a war to be the next breakout series has created an endless stream of people sitting and reminiscing about the most traumatic thing that has ever happened to them. arrival.
The series is garnering huge attention and has quickly become one of Netflix’s top 10 shows.
With the reopening of investigations and the possibility of an appeal in the ongoing trial, the series certainly does not have to end.