Did Alex Murdaugh Try to Silence Witnesses of Son Paul Murdaugh’s Fatal Boat Crash?

After a night of partying, Paul Murdaugh was drunk in the early morning hours of Feb. 24, 2019, when the boat he was driving slammed into Archers Creek Bridge with his girlfriend Morgan Doughty, Mallory Beach, Anthony Cook, Connor Cook and Miley Altman aboard.

Mallory was thrown overboard and died, while the others were injured.

Paul was charged two months later with one count of boating under the influence causing death and two counts of boating under the influence causing great bodily injury. He was awaiting trial in the felony case when his father Alex Murdaugh shot him and his mother Maggie Murdaugh to death at their Islandton, S.C., home.

In Hulu’s Murdaugh: Death in the Family, Alex (Jason Clarke) and his father Randolph Murdaugh III (Gerald McRaney) go to the hospital to encourage the kids not to speak to authorities—which, by multiple accounts, did happen.

Alex later denied in a legal filing attempting to influence Connor, but the young man said in the 2023 Netflix documentary Murdaugh Murders that Paul’s dad approached him in the hall at the hospital and whispered to him not to say anything, that he would take care of everything.

And Paul was just starting to give a statement to police when his grandfather Randolph came in and, per law enforcement records, said, “I am his lawyer starting now. He isn’t giving any statements.”