I’ve been reading the NYPost more recently, which is where I picked up on these two cases. However, I’m trying to use local sources when I can.
I don’t want to seem like I’m posting these to be exploitative. But both of these two crimes happened recently, and both have interesting elements to them.
1. The Murdaugh family in South Carolina is prominent in local legal circles.
…several members held the elected position of solicitor for the 14th Judicial Circuit, which serves Beaufort, Hampton, Jasper, Allendale and Colleton counties, from 1920 until 2006. Multiple members of the Murdaughs still work at the Peters, Murdaugh, Parker, Eltzroth & Detrick law firm in Hampton.
In 2019, Paul Murdaugh, who was 20 years old, was charged with three felony counts of boating while intoxicated. He was involved in a boat crash that killed a 19 year old woman.
He pleaded not guilty to the charges in May 2019 and had not spent time in jail. There hadn’t been any movement on the criminal case since July 2019, when his bond was modified to allow him to travel.
Last Monday, Paul Murdaugh and his mother, Maggie, were found shot to death on their property.
According to reports, both were shot with different weapons: Paul was apparently killed with a shotgun, while an “assault rifle” (I know, I know) was used to kill his mother.
There’s pretty extensive coverage on “The State” website. I do want to highlight this editorial, “Another Murdaugh tragedy. Another reason to lose faith in the criminal justice system“, which pretty clearly implies that the state was doing a lousy job of prosecuting Paul Murdaugh.
2. Ashley Henley was a Mississippi state representative from 2016 to 2020.
On December 26th last year, Ms. Henley’s sister-in-law, Kristina Michelle Jones, was found dead in her trailer home after a fire.
Henley was frustrated with her sister-in-law’s case, she posted on social media recently, according to the publication.
On Sunday night, Ms. Henley was found dead outside her sister-in-law’s trailer.
…she had been shot, but did not disclose many details because “we are in the earliest stages of an investigation” and that the gunshot was “non-accidental.”
It isn’t clear to me, from what I’ve read, if the fire was ruled accidental or purposeful, or if there even was a ruling. (Law enforcement now says they are re-investigating it.)
I feel like I should have something more here, but the only thing I can come up with is irresponsible speculation. There’s an obvious theory of the crime in the Murdaugh case (and the Post is reporting the family received threats prior to the shooting) but the obvious isn’t always true.
As for the Henley case, there’s an obvious theory for that, too, if you’ve ever watched any legal show on television. But life isn’t like “Perry Mason”: people generally don’t get murdered because they “got too close to the truth”. I don’t think it is even clear that there was a crime involved before the murder, let alone that Ms. Henley was killed for that reason.
But, as is frequently the case, somebody’s going to get a true crime book out of one or both of these cases.