$10m fraud lawyer faces life for killing family

A HIGH-PROFILE lawyer who shot dead his wife and son to distract from a fraud and his multi-million-dollar impending financial ruin has been convicted of double murder in a case that has gripped America.

- Tristan Kirk

Alex Murdaugh, 54, killed wife Maggie and son Paul at the family's 1,700-acre estate before trying to pin the murders on vigilantes he said had been hounding his powerful family. At the time Murdaugh was deep in debt and had stolen more than $10 million from clients and colleagues in a fraud that was about to be uncovered.

He was also due in court to face a lawsuit over his son's drunken boat crash two years earlier in which a teenage girl had died. At a six-week trial which become the subject of a Netflix documentary, Murdaugh insisted that he was not responsible for the shootings. He had earlier put forward a false alibi, claiming he had been sleeping on the sofa at the time of the murders and only discovered the bodies after visiting his sick mother.