Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/Reuters
South Carolina jurors on Thursday heard Alex Murdaugh admit he asked his drug dealer to shoot him in the head so his son could collect a hefty life insurance payout—three months after prosecutors allege the disgraced former lawyer murdered his wife and son.
“I was in a very bad place. I thought it would be better for me not to be here anymore. I thought that it would make it easier on my family for me to be dead,” Murdaugh said in a Sept. 13, 2021, interview with the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division. “I told him that things were getting to be really bad and it would be better off if I was not here. I asked him to shoot me.”
Murdaugh’s admission came just nine days after he called police to report that a “very nice male” shot him on a South Carolina back road. Murdaugh then repeated the story several times that day, including to agent Ryan Kelly. Kelly testified on Thursday that Murdaugh described the suspect as a white male suspect who was in his “30 or 40s” and had “close-cropped hair and facial hair” and drove a newer model dark blue Chevrolet pickup with “sport tires.”