Alex Murdaughhas been arrested and charged with misappropriating insurance settlement funds in the wrongful death suit that followed the mysterious trip and fall death of his longtime housekeeper, Gloria Satterfield, authorities announced.
On Thursday morning, agents with the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement took the longtime attorney, 52, into custody as he left a drug rehabilitation facility in Orlando, Fla., SLED wrote in a release.
“These charges stem from a SLED investigation into misappropriated settlement funds in the death of Gloria Satterfield,” the release says.
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Satterfield worked as the housekeeper for the Murdaugh family for years. She died in their home in 2018, purportedly after an accident. Her sons filed a wrongful death lawsuit — allegedly at Murdaugh’s suggestion, the sons' attorney, Eric Bland said.
Alex Murdaugh.Mic Smith/AP/Shutterstock
But they “never saw a dime of it,” Bland said.
Murdaugh has been taken to Orange County Corrections where he will be held until he receives an extradition hearing.
Upon extradition being granted or waived, he will be brought back to South Carolina to receive a bond hearing.
In September, the sons reached a settlement with Cory Fleming, the lawyer who had represented them but whom they had accused of withholding money from them, according to Bland and his partner, Ronnie Richter.
Gloria Satterfield.Brice W. Herndon and Sons Funeral Home
“Mr. Fleming and his firm agreed that the Estate will be paid back all legal fees and expenses Mr. Fleming and his law firm received from the $4,300,000 they recovered for the Estate in connection with the claims asserted against Alex Murdaugh for the death of Gloria Satterfield,” Bland and Richter said.
“In addition, their malpractice insurance carrier agreed to pay to the Estate their full policy limits of insurance,” Bland and Richter said.
“A more comprehensive joint statement from Mr. Fleming, his firm, and the Satterfield Estate will be issued later this week.”
Murdaugh’s lawyers, Dick Harpootlian and Jim Griffin, released a statement Thursday about their client’s arrest confirming the charges and saying, “Alex intends to fully cooperate with this investigation, as he has with the investigation into the murder of his wife and son. He deeply regrets that his actions have distracted from the efforts to solve their murders.”
Alex Murdaugh Referred Housekeeper’s Sons to Their Attorney, New Lawyer Says
On Sept. 15, the sons filed a lawsuit against Alex Murdaugh alleging that after Satterfield died, Murdaugh referred them — Michael “Tony” Satterfield and Brian Harriot — to Fleming so they could file a wrongful death claim against him, the lawsuit says.
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Murdaugh had allegedly said that Satterfield died after tripping over his family’s dogs, attorney Bland told PEOPLE previously.
“After the funeral, he came up to the two sons and said, ‘Hey, look, I’m going to recommend that you go see this attorney Cory Fleming, and he’s going to represent you two in the estate and bring claims in connection with your mother’s death,'” Bland said.
Though a death settlement of $505,000 was approved, Bland told PEOPLE his clients “haven’t been paid one dime since this was settled in 2020.”
The $505,000 isn’t all that Bland alleges his clients never received.
After he filed the Sept. 15 lawsuit on behalf of his clients, Bland said he discovered a previously undiscovered judge’s order approving a $4.3 million settlement.
According to the Order Approving Settlement filed in 2019 in the Hampton Court of Common Pleas, the sons were supposed to receive $2.765 million of the $4.3 million settlement.
But in the Order Approving Settlement, it states that $1.435 million of the Settlement went to attorney’s fees. It is unclear how much the sons would receive.
These attorneys and an attorney for Murdaugh did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.
Bland and Richter’s work is not finished, they said in the statement.
“The estate will continue pursuing other culpable parties who resist acceptance of responsibility for their part in this tragic matter,” the attorneys wrote.
On Sept. 15, the same day Bland filed the lawsuit, the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) announced that it was opening an investigation into Satterfield’s death.
SLED officials said that a coroner had recently found inconsistencies surrounding Satterfield’s death. The incident was not reported to the coroner in 2018, and there was no autopsy performed at the time.
Details of Satterfield’s fall have not been disclosed. It’s unclear who was at the home at the time of the incident.
A well-known attorney in the South Carolina Lowcountry, Alex Murdaugh came into the national spotlight after he came home on the night of June 7, 2021, to find his wife, Maggie, 52, and youngest son, Paul, 22, shot to death on the grounds of their hunting lodge.
The Murdaugh Family.
Police are still searching for their killer or killers. They’re also trying to unravel the knot of alleged illegal activity, scandal and bizarre behavior centered on Alex Murdaugh that surfaced after the killings.
Since June, Alex Murdaugh has been fired from his job at his family’s law firm, accused of embezzlement, shot in the head, gone to rehab for substance abuse and arrested and accused of hiring a hitman to help him commit suicide so his surviving son could cash in on a $10 million life insurance policy.
Bland and Murdaugh’s attorneys did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s requests for comment.
Sons’ Lawyers: ‘No One Is Above the Law’
Calling today “a bittersweet day for the Satterfield and Harriott families,” Bland and Richter said in a release that “avarice and betrayal of trust are at the heart of this matter.
“Lawsuits and claims are not vehicles for lawyers, defendants and/or friends to enrich themselves at the expense of their clients,” they said. “These belong to the clients and the clients only. This is the sacred trust that lawyers and fiduciaries owe their clients.”
Since early September, they wrote, the families have been dealing “with the betrayal of trust and that their loved one’s death was used as a vehicle to enrich others over the clients.”
They reiterated that, “It is not over. A very good start to holding everyone accountable who either participated knowingly or breached their duties.
“The bottom line is no one is above the law.”
source: people.com
