On Tuesday, police said that they have arrested Curtis Edward Smith on several charges on the attempt on Alex Murdaugh’s life. However, the twist in the tale is that the legal scion had paid Curtis to shoot him in the head and to make it look like a random, drive by attack. He wanted his surviving son, Alexander “Buster” Murdaugh to get a life insurance payout worth $10 million.
Edward Smith is a former client of Murdaugh. The Daily Beast reported that a law enforcement source had told them that Smith had supplied Murdaugh with drugs. The 61-year-old from Walterboro, South Carolina, had also been represented by Murdaugh in minor traffic matters and a 2015 lawsuit filed by Smith against a forest management company in Charlotte, North Carolina.
The 53-year-old lawyer reportedly gave Smith a gun to shoot him on September 4, but he missed a fatal shot and the lawyer survived. The incident took place in a rural road in Hampton County in South Carolina. Smith allegedly drove away from the scene and got rid of the gun in an unknown location.
The hired hitman has been arrested on the following charges:
- assisted suicide
- assault and battery
- pointing and presenting a firearm
- distribution of methamphetamine
- possession of marijuana
- insurance fraud
- conspiracy to commit insurance fraud.
The SLED said in a statement that Mr. Murdaugh had given them a statement in which he admitted that they had concocted a scheme that he would be murdered by Mr. Smith so that his son could collect a life insurance policy that was worth approximately $10 million. The agency said that he was not as yet been charged.
Murdaugh entered rehab soon after the shooting for opioid addiction. He is under investigation by his own law firm for misappropriation of millions of dollars from the company. He comes from a long line of lawyers and his family is one of the most prominent legal families in South Carolina from more than a century. Last week, his law license was indefinitely revoked by the South Carolina Supreme Court.
In June, Alex Murdaugh’s wife and younger son Paul were brutally murdered, and the case is under investigation. His younger son was also under investigation for the death of his friend Mallory Beach, who died in a boat crash in February 2019, in a boat crash. The boat was allegedly crashed by Paul, into a piling in Archers Creek and he was reportedly intoxicated at that time. The criminal case against Paul has been dropped after his death, though a civil suit is ongoing.
