Fact vs. fiction: The real story behind the Murdaugh murders and Hulu’s dramatized retelling
By Alaa Elassar, Dianne Gallagher, CNN
(CNN) — This story doesn’t begin with a twist. It starts with a warning.
Before a single scene plays, Hulu’s “Murdaugh: Death in the Family” true crime miniseries flashes a familiar disclaimer across a black screen: “While this program is inspired by actual events, certain parts have been fictionalized solely for dramatic purposes and are not intended to reflect on any actual person or entity.”
Moments later, viewers are dropped into the glow of a grand Southern home. Every light is on, every room frozen in time. Cheerful family photos. A framed copy of the poem “The Man in the Glass.” A sign that reads, “The Murdaughs together is our favorite place to be.”
And then the warmth disappears, replaced with the dripping of blood – slow and unmistakable, pooling from the bodies of a mother and her son.
The scene cuts to an actor, Jason Clarke, replicating Alex Murdaugh’s desperate 911 call, his voice cracking as he pleads for help. His wife Maggie (Patricia Arquette) and son Paul (Johnny Berchtold) lie motionless, blood seeping into concrete and grass while he wipes his face, crying, pacing, unraveling.
It’s a chilling opening to a series that dramatizes the violent collapse of a powerful South Carolina Lowcountry lineage – a dynasty built on influence, now defined by secrets laid bare.
At the center is the crime that dominated headlines: Alex Murdaugh’s prosecution for the 2021 killings of his wife and son. A jury convicted him in March 2023, sentencing him to life in prison in a case that captivated the country.
For eight hours, the series unspools the family’s unraveling, layer by layer, scandal by scandal, mixing documented facts with dramatized interpretations.
Alex Murdaugh’s defense attorneys, Dick Harpootlian and Jim Griffin, have sharply criticized the series, calling it inaccurate and “misleading” in its portrayal of the family and the events surrounding the case. In a statement to CNN, they said Hulu never contacted Alex Murdaugh, his son Buster, or attorneys to verify details or hear their perspective, instead relying on “sensationalized accounts” from sources with no direct connection to the Murdaughs.
Hulu series co-creator Michael D. Fuller explained on the first episode of the official “Murdaugh: Death in the Family” podcast the series aimed to blend factual events with emotional storytelling.
”These are human beings. They’re complex. They’re complicated. It’s our version of them, obviously, but hopefully, there’s some truth illuminated about how they interacted with each other,” he said. “It’s that human drama that’s at the heart of (the series) that I would really love for people to take away.”
CNN has reached out to Hulu for comment.
So how much of what viewers saw was real?
Here’s what the series gets right — and what it doesn’t.
The true order of events vs. the show’s rewrite
The series shifts key events to suit its narrative flow. Gloria Satterfield, the Murdaugh family’s housekeeper for more than two decades, is elevated to a central character to anchor the show’s emotional arc. In doing so, her death is depicted alongside the February 2019 boat crash involving Paul Murdaugh, an arrangement that does not match the real timeline.
Satterfield actually died in 2018, but the show features her as alive a year later. She is portrayed as a kind, loving person, and an important figure in Paul Murdaugh’s life.
“We decided that in order to show her relationship with the family, with Paul in particular, and what that meant, and then feel her loss when she had been there,” Fuller explained during the podcast. “It made story truth sense to have her be alive and see how that plays out in the current timeline of our show.”
It is true that Satterfield died after a fall at the Murdaugh home. What the series dramatizes is the lead-up to that fall. The show depicts her tripping while carrying the family’s luggage inside, suggesting Alex pressured her to do so despite her known back issues. There is no evidence this occurred.
The series also covers Alex Murdaugh’s elaborate scheme to seize Satterfield’s insurance settlements after her death. In the show, he introduces Satterfield’s two sons, Brian and Tony, to a lawyer named Cory Fleming and lays out his plan: Fleming would represent the Satterfields in a lawsuit against Murdaugh’s insurance company, Murdaugh would claim responsibility, and the settlement would cover their bills — and more.
On screen, Brian collapses into Murdaugh’s arms with gratitude. Later, Murdaugh, his banker and the attorney are shown celebrating a $3.8 million settlement, money the show implies they kept for themselves instead of giving to Satterfield’s children.
The core of the scheme is true, but the numbers are dramatized. In reality, a settlement agreement stipulated $2,765,000 for the Satterfield family, but they never saw that money, the affidavit said. Instead, the money went to an account Murdaugh created and owned for his own use, an affidavit from the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) said.
Another inaccuracy in the timeline was the family vacation to the Bahamas, shown on the show as happening after Paul Murdaugh’s boat crash.
They did go on a vacation to the Bahamas two years before the crash and met some British tourists who, after the murders, appeared on Fox News and talked about meeting Paul. Contrary to the series’ dramatization, there is no evidence that Paul was involved in any physical altercation with anyone during the vacation, as depicted in the show.
When addiction meets deception
At the heart of the Murdaugh saga – both the series and the truth – is a pattern of long-running, calculated deception.
Hulu’s depiction of Alex Murdaugh’s engagement in extensive financial fraud – including embezzling funds from his own law firm, misappropriating client money and committing insurance fraud – are well-documented and formed a key part of the investigations leading up to his criminal trials.
While the series uses a fictional client named “Alvarez” to illustrate Murdaugh’s pattern of theft, the underlying misconduct is real. In reality, Murdaugh was convicted of stealing settlement money from multiple personal injury clients.
According to court documents, he funneled those payments into a fake account he created called “Forge Consulting,” allowing him to quietly divert the funds for his own use while keeping the victims and his own law firm in the dark.
The jellyfish-harvesting venture depicted in the series is based on a real business attempt by Alex Murdaugh, but the show significantly distorts both the timeline. In reality, Murdaugh’s jellyfish operation was shut down by South Carolina’s Department of Health and Environmental Control in 2014 over permitting issues and environmental concerns — years earlier than the timeframe shown on screen, according to reporting from FITSNews.
Showrunner Fuller later told MovieWeb the jellyfish storyline wasn’t meant to be a factual retelling but a symbolic “Southern business endeavor,” standing in for the various side deals and land ventures Alex Murdaugh was pursuing at the time.
Alongside the financial crimes, Alex Murdaugh struggled with a serious substance abuse problem, particularly opioids, he previously testified.
The series portrays this addiction through dramatic visuals — showing him popping pills in private or struggling to function — though some of the specific moments may be fictionalized.
Paul Murdaugh’s deadly boat crash and its ripple effects
In February 2019, Paul Murdaugh was at the center of a tragedy that would become a defining chapter in the family’s downfall.
The Murdaugh family’s boat, which Paul was on with several friends including 19-year-old Mallory Beach, crashed into the Archers Creek Bridge in Beaufort County, South Carolina, according to investigators. Beach was thrown into the water and later found dead.
Hulu’s depiction of the events, although dramatic, is reasonably accurate. After the crash, Paul Murdaugh was charged with boating under the influence causing severe bodily injury and death — charges that were still pending at the time of his own death in 2021.
It is also true that Beach’s family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Alex Murdaugh and the convenience stores that illegally sold alcohol to the underage group that night.
Police said Paul Murdaugh was drunk when he crashed his father’s boat into a bridge with five friends aboard, tossing Beach into the water. Search teams found her body a week after the crash.
Both in the show and in real life, friends and witnesses told investigators Paul was heavily intoxicated, and surveillance and video evidence suggested he may have been driving, though the exact driver became a point of controversy.
This crash — its aftermath, the lawsuit, and the scrutiny it brought — marked one of the first major fractures in the Murdaugh family’s carefully maintained public image.
The relationship dynamics between the Murdaughs
The series leans heavily on what its creators call a blend of “truth” truth and “emotional truth” — a mix of documented facts and imagined moments designed to capture how the Murdaughs might have interacted behind closed doors.
One “truth” truth was the inclusion of journalist Mandy Matney (Brittany Snow), who appears in the series investigating the Murdaugh family’s secrets. Matney is a real reporter, and the show draws heavily from her reporting and perspective featured in her true-crime podcast.
As showrunner Fuller put it, the goal was getting “to the human, emotional story,” even when specific scenes aren’t rooted in verified events.
This approach is most visible in the family dynamics. The actors are placed in tense confrontations, intimate conversations and private moments no one outside the family can substantiate, including awkward dinners, spiritual retreats and fleeting, charged arguments.
These scenes give the audience emotional access, but they are ultimately dramatizations; there’s no public record confirming they ever happened.
The series also attempts to humanize the Murdaughs, presenting them as complicated rather than purely villainous or sympathetic. But Alex Murdaugh and his defense team have criticized the portrayals, arguing the show misrepresents his relationships with Maggie and Paul and leans into sensationalized tension that didn’t exist in real life.
“Alex is deeply disappointed and disturbed by the recent Hulu streaming series about him and the entire Murdaugh family … The depiction of their personal family dynamics is particularly troubling, as it totally mischaracterizes Alex’s relationships with his wife Maggie and his son Paul, both of whom Alex loves so dearly,” a statement from Murdaugh’s lawyer read.
“Alex was always extremely proud of Paul. Any other portrayal of his feelings toward Paul and Maggie are baseless and false,” the statement said.
How it all ended
Just as he does in the show, Alex Murdaugh has maintained his innocence, claiming he discovered the bodies of son and wife after returning from a brief visit to his ailing mother that night.
However, the series takes a bold turn on its finale, depicting Murdaugh lying in his cell, reflecting on that night. In a flashback, he recalls being the one holding the gun that killed them, though there’s no way to prove this flashback is real.
Murdaugh stood trial for the 2021 murders and was found guilty in March 2023 and sentenced to life in prison.
His attorneys have appealed for a new trial based on allegations of jury tampering. Legal briefs have been filed but it’s unclear when the state Supreme Court will consider the case.
Murdaugh was also disbarred and pleaded guilty to dozens of federal and state financial crimes, admitting to a scheme that defrauded his law firm, clients and the government of about $9.3 million, according to the state attorney general.
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