Alex Murdaugh, on the left, and Gloria Satterfield, on the right. (South Carolina Department of Corrections; Bland Richter, LLP)
What good is the word of convicted double murderer Alex Murdaugh?
Not very good at all; and even then, it’s only good for Alex Murdaugh, attorneys representing the family of the disgraced lawyer’s former housekeeper said during a press conference Monday morning.
Earlier this month, in his first response to a lawsuit filed in April 2022, Murdaugh took responsibility for several lies about the circumstances surrounding the death of Gloria Satterfield, 57, who worked as the Murdaugh family housekeeper for over two decades.
Satterfield died in what has been described as a “trip and fall accident” at the Murdaugh’s then-hunting lodge, Moselle, on Feb. 26, 2018. After her passing, Murdaugh asserted legal responsibility and sued himself to obtain lucrative insurance proceeds for the dead woman’s family. Instead of giving the money over to Satterfield’s family, Murdaugh stole some $4.3 million.
Now, the insurance company at the center of the controversy, Nautilus Insurance Company, is looking to vindicate its own rights and interests due to Murdaugh’s admitted serial lies and financial crimes. But the recent response by Murdaugh, the Satterfield family’s attorneys say, is simply more of the same old Murdaugh mendacity.
More Law&Crime coverage: Alex Murdaugh indicted on tax evasion – bringing total alleged financial crimes to 101
Satterfield attorney Ronnie Richter said the family’s legal team sought to “correct a false narrative that’s been advanced through the pleadings” in the lawsuit and called the May 1 filing “the latest misinformation campaign that’s been launched by team Murdaugh.”
Richter said the latest effort by the family’s legal team was an attempt to “clear the fog” about Satterfield’s death once and for all, noting that Alex Murdaugh is a “well-documented liar.”
“While not parties to the lawsuit,” Richter added, “the continued attacks on the Satterfields cannot and will not be ignored.”
Key in the case is what caused Satterfield to fall as she traversed the brick steps up to the front door of the family house – a trek she had made for literally over two decades prior to her death.
Murdaugh and others have long maintained that the family’s four dogs tripped up the housekeeper and caused her to fall that day. Murdaugh, however, now says he simply made that story up.
Alex Murdaugh’s words to that effect, to investigators in or around November 2018, were that “the dogs tripped her up.”
“Incredibly, in answering the lawsuit, Murdaugh claims now, for the first time, that he quote: ‘invented the critical facts giving rise to the Satterfield claim and that no dogs were involved’ in Gloria’s death,” Richter said on Monday. “As if he has not caused enough damage to the Satterfield family, Murdaugh took the additional step in the lawsuit, although he didn’t have to, of suggesting by way of defense, that because he successfully stole the money and because that money is gone, but also because the Satterfields were successful in obtaining money from other sources, that Nautilus should look to the Satterfields to get back the money that Alex stole.”
In order to combat what the family’s attorneys term the “latest false narrative” emanating from the Murdaugh camp, Richter and fellow Satterfield attorney Eric Bland decided to release “internal investigative reports” conducted by attorneys engaged in the investigation of Satterfield’s death at the time of her fall at Moselle.
As it turns out, Murdaugh wasn’t the only person who mentioned the family’s dogs in relation to Satterfield’s fall, one such report says.
On the day she died, all four dogs were loose on the property, Richter said. And, he said, the dogs had a habit of nosing around humans.
The report itself cites since-deceased Maggie Murdaugh: “Maggie said that the chocolate lab Bourbon was ‘just horrible’ and always whining, seeking attention, and getting excited. Maggie said it was not uncommon for the four dogs, who were friendly to visitors, to ‘get under people’s feet’ whenever people came to the house.”
When Satterfield fell, Maggie Murdaugh and Paul Murdaugh (who is also now deceased) were asleep but awoke to the sound of the family’s dogs barking, Richter said, citing the report. The report goes on to elaborate on that moment, saying: “Maggie heard the dogs barking in an unusual tone as if something had happened.”
Maggie Murdaugh then went to the front door and found Satterfield at the bottom of the stairs bleeding from her head, the attorney said, again citing the report, and noting that “all four dogs were around Gloria.” In a separate interview, Paul Murdaugh confirmed he was asleep at the time, but awoke to the sound of his mother calling him. The youngest Murdaugh son went on to say that when his father arrived, he recalled Satterfield “said something about dogs.”
In basic terms, Nautilus is now seeking to recover the $3.8 million it paid in a prior settlement – arguing that those claims were paid based on Alex Murdaugh’s false statements.
“Now, it would appear that the only person who can contest the manner in which Gloria died is Alex Murdaugh,” Richter said. “And he only contests it in the context of now being sued by Nautilus to recover the money that it had entrusted to Alex.”
Bland offered a quote from William Faulkner about idiocy, sound, and fury “signifying nothing” to frame the way the Satterfield family’s legal team views the latest filings by Murdaugh’s team.
“We believe that the press and the public are being played here,” Bland continued. “Because legally and factually, they are 100 percent wrong. We recovered more than seven-and-a-half million dollars from sources other than Nautilus Insurance Company.”
The attorneys insist that Murdaugh is severely off base with his efforts to have the insurance company recoup from the Satterfields because “Nautilus Insurance Company has never paid one cent” to the former housekeeper’s family.
“Nothing,” Bland said – saying that the claims on which those monetary rewards were recovered were entirely separate as well.
Read the report released today in full below:
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