Double murderer Alex Murdaugh‘s only surviving son is bitter and struggling to escape the stain of his killer father’s legacy, the Daily Mail can reveal.
Four years after his mother Maggie, 52, and brother Paul, 22, were shot and killed by the disgraced legal scion, the 32-year-old still hasn’t adapted to his bleak new reality.
Buster Murdaugh grew up as a member of one of South Carolina’s most distinguished families but the gruesome slayings carried out by his father and the publicity of the trial that followed have left him without many career opportunities.
A source close to him has told the Daily Mail that, though he believes his father to be innocent of the murders, Buster is ‘really angry’ at the sweeping financial crimes that Murdaugh was subsequently convicted of.
‘He’s living his life but he doesn’t really have too much going on,’ a member of his inner circle said.
‘He’s pretty directionless, but he’s figuring it out.’
Buster and his family found themselves in the middle of a media firestorm in June 2021 when the elder Murdaugh, a high-profile attorney in South Carolina’s Low Country, called 911 to report that he had found the bodies of his wife and son on their sprawling Moselle estate in rural Colleton County.
Alex Murdaugh’s (far right) only surviving son, Buster, has settled down with his wife Brooklynn and their dogs, an hour away from the South Carolina estate where his mother and brother were gunned down
Alex Murdaugh’s (far right) is behind bars for murdering wife Maggie and son Paul (together middle)
Police arrived to find Maggie and Paul shot dead. Investigators determined that two firearms had been used. Although Murdaugh initially denied involvement, officers soon began to unravel a web of financial mismanagement, embezzlement, fraud and drug abuse.
Three months later, Murdaugh – while under suspension for the alleged murders – was shot in the head as he changed a tire on his black Mercedes-Benz SUV.
Authorities soon alleged that he had arranged the shooting himself by hiring distant relative Curtis Edward Smith in a failed suicide-for-hire plot so that Buster could receive a $10 million life insurance payout.
‘That was a really stressful time for Buster,’ the source said. ‘He felt like things went from s*** to s***tier. And they keep getting worse.’
The ensuing scandal ended one of South Carolina’s most dominant family dynasties. A member of the Murdaugh family had served as solicitor of the 14th Judicial Circuit for 86 years, and most family members were prominent attorneys and judges.
Murdaugh was ultimately charged with more than 90 financial crimes, ranging from embezzlement to money laundering – and two counts of murder.
In March 2023, he was convicted after a highly publicized trial to two consecutive life terms without possibility of parole for killing his wife and son by the dog kennels of the family’s hunting lodge in Islandton.
He was also sentenced in federal court in April 2024 to 40 years for financial crimes involving millions stolen from clients and colleagues – a sentence that was to run concurrently with his state prison terms.
He is being held in protective custody at McCormick Correctional Institution, a maximum security prison where it’s likely that he will die. He continues to deny responsibility for the murders.
Buster Murdaugh and Brooklynn White arriving at Colleton County Court in South Carolina for Alex Murdaugh’s double murder trial in February 2023. The couple are now married
Buster is ‘really angry’ at the sweeping financial crimes that his father Alex was subsequently convicted of
The deaths have spawned multiple documentaries and a motion picture film is in production, with actor Jason Clarke playing Murdaugh.
Buster has been trying to get back on his feet with his former long-term girlfriend and now new wife Brooklynn White, an attorney, after he dropped out of law school. The couple moved into a modest three-bedroom home in Bluffton, an hour away from the South Carolina low country estate where Buster was raised.
The fallout in the two years since what local media called the ‘trial of the century’ has taken its toll on Buster, who is frequently confronted by angry members of the public whenever he goes near his hometown.
‘You don’t run into any of these people in public,’ Buster once told his father on a jailhouse phone call.
‘But I get stopped and yelled at all the time. I got cussed at in the gas station the other day.’
Still, Buster stands by his father, insisting that he would never have murdered his wife and son.
In March 2023, Murdaugh was convicted after a highly publicized trial to two consecutive life terms without possibility of parole for killing his wife and son by the dog kennels of the family’s hunting lodge in Islandton
Buster Murdaugh sat through the entire trial and did not react when his father was found guilty in 2023. He rarely speaks to his father. When they do, the calls are always short and initiated by the elder Murdaugh, now 57, from behind bars
In his first and only interview since the murder trial, Buster told the Fox Nation documentary The Fall of the House of Murdaugh: ‘I do not think that he could be affiliated with endangering my mother and brother.
‘I think that I hold a very unique perspective that nobody else in that courtroom ever held. And I know the love that I have witnessed.’
Despite this, the two rarely speak. When they do, the calls are always short and initiated by the elder Murdaugh, now 57, from behind bars.
‘I don’t think he’s got a lot to say to his dad at the moment,’ the source added. ‘I mean, what’s there to talk about’.
