(NewsNation) — Valerie Bauerlein, a veteran Wall Street Journal reporter who attended every day of Alex Murdaugh‘s widely watched murder case, tells “Elizabeth Vargas Reports” his family’s legal dynasty was founded on fraud.
“Every crime he’s convicted of has an echo in the past,” she said, referencing insurance schemes and bribery committed by Murdaugh’s forefathers in Hampton County, South Carolina.
Bauerlein’s new book, “The Devil at His Elbow: Alex Murdaugh and the Fall of a Southern Dynasty,” explores the Murdaughs’ fraught legacy in the area and his eventual conviction.
The disgraced lawyer was found guilty of murdering his wife and youngest son in 2023, an act of violence that many had trouble wrapping their heads around, according to Bauerlein.
“I was in the courtroom every day, as you mentioned, and I talked to people. There are people lining up at four in the morning to get in. And I would ask them, ‘Why are you here? What is it?’,” she said. “And they would say, ‘I just don’t understand how a man can kill his wife and son.'”
Bauerlein suggests the pressure of his financial crimes, an upcoming Mallory Beach case hearing and news of his ailing father contributed to his decision to kill.
“It changed the subject,” she said. “It made him, instead of a focus of suspicion, a grieving father. And, you know, widowed.”
Murdaugh’s other crimes include stealing millions from clients over nearly a decade and helping his son, Paul Murdaugh, cover up a deadly boat crash in 2019. He was sentenced to life without parole for the deaths of his family and an additional 40 years for his federal financial crimes.
But he and his legal team are appealing, aiming to get lesser sentences or a retrial on the basis of jury tampering. Becky Hill, the Colleton County court clerk accused of jury tampering during the Alex Murdaugh trial, resigned from office in March 2024.
Though Bauerlein acknowledged the “legitimate questions” surrounding Hill’s actions, the reporter does not foresee a new trial in Murdaugh’s future.
“It’s a very high bar to get a new trial. And I think the judges in South Carolina … give great deference to one another, and Judge Clifton Newman was very well regarded,” Bauerlein said. “So, it’s hard for me to imagine that he will.”