Nearly half of Alex Murdaugh’s remaining money will be distributed to the victims of a fatal Beaufort County boat crash allegedly caused by the disbarred attorney’s late son, Paul, according to a court order issued Feb. 5.
Court-appointed special referee Walt Tollison decided that 45 percent of Murdaugh’s last assets would be distributed to the victims of the February 2019 crash that set in motion the ex-attorney’s downfall. They include the family of Mallory Beach, who was killed at the age of 19 in the crash, for which Paul Murdaugh was charged with boating under the influence.
The Beach family will receive 29 percent of the money court-appointed lawyers marshalled by selling Murdaugh’s land holdings and farm equipment and liquidating his 401(k). Altogether, the assets totaled just under $1.8 million, some of which will be paid out to Tollison for his work on the case.
Murdaugh’s financial life was locked down by a court order in November 2021 at the request of Beach family lawyer Mark Tinsley. The attorney successfully argued that Murdaugh — once a prominent lawyer from a powerful family in Hampton — could no longer be trusted with his own money. The Beach family's lawsuit, filed in March 2019, marked one of the first signs of pressure that would ultimately close in on Murdaugh, 55.
By then, Murdaugh’s fall from grace was well underway: His wife, Maggie, and son Paul had been murdered in June 2021; his law firm had discovered that he’d stolen millions of dollars from his clients and pushed him out; and he’d allegedly tried to stage his own death on a rural roadside in his native Hampton County. A judge agreed with Tinsley that the courts needed to intervene to make sure he didn’t hide whatever he still had.
Arthur Badger, one of the clients Murdaugh stole from, will receive the second-largest share of the assets: 24 percent.
Murdaugh’s law firm, formerly known as Peters Murdaugh Parker Eltzroth & Detrick, will get 14 percent. It claimed damages because it repaid Murdaugh’s former clients the money stolen from them. An undisclosed portion of the law firm’s cut will be passed through to some of Murdaugh’s financial victims, court records show.
The firm’s new namesake, Johnny Parker, will receive 15 percent of the assets. He indicated that he lent Murdaugh $477,000 in a series of loans in 2021 but was never repaid.
Altogether, the claims against Murdaugh’s assets totaled more than $100 million. In his order, Tollison said he weighed the claimants’ relationship to Murdaugh, how much direct financial harm they suffered from Murdaugh's actions and how much they had been able to come up with from other sources — essentially, how close they’d come to being made whole.
The court gave Tollison the unenviable job of weighing more than a dozen disparate claims: comparing the toll of boat crash injuries and audacious fraud schemes against unpaid debts and claims of legal malpractice. Tollison, a Greenville attorney, wrote that he was "mindful of the amount and degree of hurt and devastation caused by the actions of Alex Murdaugh."
“In a perfect world, there would be unlimited funds,” Tollison wrote.
In the two years since the court took control of his assets, Murdaugh has been convicted of killing his wife and son, and he has pleaded guilty to a raft of state and federal financial crimes. Even if his two life sentences for murder are overturned, he faces a 27-year term in state prison for his white-collar offenses, plus an as-yet-undetermined federal sentence.
Still, he continues to face legal liability related to the claims, and he is named in at least eight lawsuits related to the boat crash and financial crimes. Tinsley, who is involved with three of the remaining cases, said the distribution of his assets would not stop those lawsuits from going forward.
"We're getting close, but we're not there yet," Tinsley said.
