Deeper look into a 'Death in the Family'

Miniseries explores saga of a seemingly untouchable Murdaugh dynasty.

- KAITLYN HUAMANI

THE CAST of the miniseries "Murdaugh: Death in the Family," from left: Mina Sundwall, Will Harrison, Jason Clarke, Patricia Arquette and Johnny Berchtold.

DANIEL DELGADO JR. Disney

A wealthy teenager from a powerful South Carolina family was drunk and behind the wheel of a boat carrying five of his friends in the winter of 2019. The boat slammed into a bridge in the middle of the night, killing a 19-year-old woman who was on board.

Somehow, the saga of the Murdaugh family only gets more twisted and complex after that point.

By the time Erin Lee Carr and Michael D. Fuller met in October 2021 to discuss dramatizing the Murdaugh family's story, that teen who crashed the boat years earlier had been brutally murdered.

Paul Murdaugh and his mother, Maggie, were killed in June 2021 at their family home. The investigation into their murders, which led to the conviction of the family's patriarch, Alex, shed light on a host of mysteries surrounding the family.

The chilling saga was covered extensively through a flurry of daily news stories and eventually in documentaries and a Lifetime movie. There were also several podcasts made about the case, but none more prolific than the "Murdaugh Murders Podcast" from journalist Mandy Matney, which boasts more than 90 episodes and serves as the source material for Hulu's new miniseries, "Murdaugh: Death in the Family." While many people know (or think they know) all the twists and turns of the case, Fuller, who co-created "Murdaugh" with Carr and is the showrunner, says the series aims to fill in the gaps of what we don't know about the Murdaughs - the "emotional truth" behind who they were and are.