Agent: Alex Murdaugh wanted to die after wife, son killed

By JEFFREY COLLINS
Associated Press

Alex Murdaugh told a state agent that he asked a friend to fatally shoot him but that the friend failed in his attempt. According to a September 2021 interview played Thursday at Murdaugh’s double murder trial, he said he gave a former client the gun to kill him at a small town gas station and that they drove to a lonely South Carolina roadside where he expected to be killed, just three months after his wife and son were shot to death. But the state agent testified that the gunshot by the former client-turned drug dealer only grazed his head. Murdaugh is accused of murder in the June 2021 killings of his wife, Maggie, and their youngest son Paul.