Alex Murdaugh Housekeeper Gloria Satterfield’s Son Testifies

Long before Alex Murdaugh was accused of killing wife Maggie and son Paul at their rural South Carolina hunting lodge in June 2021, a series of deaths had haunted the Murdaugh family.

There was the death of 19-year-old Mallory Beach in a late-night boat crash in 2019, for which Paul was awaiting trial when he was shot dead. 

There was the 2015 death of 19-year-old Stephen Smith, whose body was found in the middle of a road about 10 miles from the Murdaugh home in circumstances that did not suggest a hit-and-run. In the aftermath of the openly gay teen’s death, the Murdaugh name was frequently brought up with investigators.

And finally, there was the 2018 death of the Murdaughs’ longtime housekeeper and nanny Gloria Satterfield, who was said to have tripped on one of the family’s dogs and fallen down stairs. Weeks later, she died in a hospital from her head injuries. 

All three deaths received renewed attention in the wake of Maggie and Paul’s death, but one of them was raised in court on Friday at Alex’s murder trial. 

Satterfield’s son Tony sat in the witness stand across from his mother’s former employer to tell a judge how Alex had used his mother’s death as an opportunity to enrich himself by stealing millions that should have gone to her family. 

“Did you give him permission to steal your money?” prosecutor Creighton Waters asked Tony. 

“No,” he replied. 

But Tony was testifying in somewhat unusual circumstances: the jury was not present to hear his evidence. Instead, Judge Clifton Newman has been holding separate hearings about how much evidence prosecutors should be able to introduce at the murder trial regarding the financial crimes Murdaugh has been charged with — and, in the case of the Satterfield family, admitted to. 

The prosecution has contended that on the day of the June 7, 2021, murders of Maggie and Paul, Alex was facing a “perfect storm” of legal and financial reckoning that was set to destroy his career and potentially send him to prison. On Thursday, the chief financial officer of Alex’s former law firm testified that she’d confronted him the very morning of the murders about $792,000 in missing funds. 

Prosecutors argue Alex killed his wife and son as a distraction to buy himself time and sympathy, but his defense team says this is an argument rooted in theory, not fact. 

Throughout the murder trial, Alex’s lawyers have repeatedly asked witnesses about his relationship with his family, portraying him as a good father who provided for his loved ones and had no reason to kill. 

“Can you think of any circumstance that you can envision, knowing them as you do, where Alex would brutally murder Paul and Maggie?” defense attorney Jim Griffin asked Ronan Gibson, a friend of Paul’s who considered the Murdaughs his second family.

“Not that I can think of,” Gibson replied. 

Judge Newman decided Thursday that defense lawyers had, through that question to Gibson, “opened the door” for the jury to hear evidence from the prosecution that Alex was not all he appeared to be.