Inside double murderer's abandoned $4million estate with sinister history
Before finding Alex Murdaugh guilty of murdering his wife Maggie and son Paul, the jurors were taken to the families sprawling countryside estate.
It was at the 1,700-acre Moselle farm in Islandton, South Carolina, US, where he shot his wife five times with an assault rifle after using a shotgun to shoot his son in the head causing it to explode "like a watermelon hit with a sledgehammer", the jury had heard.
The sprawling estate on 4147 Moselle Road is bordered by the Salkehatchie River and includes a 5,275-square-foot house, a farm and the dog kennels at the heart of the investigation.
It was there the bloodied bodies were found by police along with killer Murdaugh.
Paul's body was found in the kennels' feed room, where he had been ambushed with a shotgun.
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The case has captivated the US and has been highlighted in the Netflix documentary Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal.
Bullet holes are seen in the glass at the Murdaugh Moselle estate (Andrew J Whitaker/AP/REX/Shutterstock)The killer then turned his guns on Maggie.
She had tried to flee, backing to by a quadbike under an outside hangar before being shot five times.
When the jury visited on March 1, they were also taken to the scene of another earlier death - that of Murdaugh's former housekeeper, Gloria Satterfield.
She died in February 2018 after allegedly tripping over one of Murdaugh's hunting dogs.
Her family accused the legal-scion of tricking them out of millions of dollars in settlement over her death.
The hanger and dog kennels where the bodies of Paul Murdaugh and Maggie were found (Andrew J Whitaker/AP/REX/Shutterstock)Murdaugh encourage them to sue him, saying his insurance would cover it but when the insurance did pay out he allegedly pocketed the money.
As part of his numerous charges of financial crimes, Murdaugh is also charged with stealing $4m in wrongful death settlement funds from her family.
But the estate's murky past stretches back even further.
Murdaugh bought the property in 2013 from Barrett Boulware, a fisherman, long-time friend of Murdaugh's and a suspected drug smuggler, who died in 2018.
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Murdaugh reportedly paid Boulware’s wife Jeannine Morris Boulware just $5 for it, a move which is sometimes carried out so the seller can avoid paying capital gains taxes.
Boulware and his dad were arrested on drug smuggling charges in 1980 after authorities discovered 15 tons of cannabis on a shrimp boat in the Bahamas but the charges were dropped when a key witness died.
His name also came up in court when it was heard Murdaugh had stolen $750,000 in insurance money from him as he was dying of colon cancer.
The estate from above (AP)Moselle, which consists of four bedrooms and 3.5 baths, was just one of the Murdaugh's homes with others in Hampton, South Carolina and Edisto Beach.
It became the family's main home after the one in Hampton was damaged in a hurricane.
But before it was used mostly as their hunting lodge. With acres and acres of swamp land, ponds and brush, it was a haven for animals such as doves, hogs, deer and ducks - until the hunts started of course.
Eight months after the killings, Murdaugh put the estate on the market, listed as Cross Swamp Farm.
The feed room where Paul Murdaugh's body was found (Andrew J Whitaker/AP/REX/Shutterstock)What could have been a heartbroken man trying to put his loss behind him was actually a killer putting distance between himself and his crimes.
It is currently under offer for a $3.9million bid from a mystery buyer.
According to the listing by the Crosby Land Co. of Colleton County, the estate hosts “an unusually diverse habitat with varying forest types and age class distribution”.
Alex Murdaugh cries during the murder trial (Joshua Boucher/AP/REX/Shutterstock)It continues: “The landscape includes productive pine plantations, open fallow fields, and mature stands of mixed pine/hardwood, those upland regions give way to the flat bottomland of the Salkehatchie River Basin.
“The property boasts over 2.5 miles of river frontage, offering freshwater fishing, kayaking, and abundant deer, turkey, and waterfowl populations.”
During the trial, it was mentioned that Murdaugh’s brother had called police to remove trespassers after he saw people taking selfies in front of the feed room where the brutal murders were carried out.
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