Richard Alexander Murdaugh came up in a prominent family, both in the legal and social realms of Hampton County, S.C. He attended the University of South Carolina and graduated from its law school, just like his father. Three generations of Murdaugh men served as the circuit solicitor, the South Carolina equivalent of a district attorney, for a region spanning five counties in the state. Randolph Murdaugh Sr. was the first in the family to assume the role in 1920. The family held such power in the region that many locals called the district “Murdaugh Country.”
Alex was a respected personal injury attorney before being convicted of the murders of his wife Maggie and youngest son Paul in 2023. He will spend the rest of his life in prison for the killings but maintains his innocence and is currently appealing his conviction. He also admitted to committing a slew of financial crimes, for which he was cumulatively sentenced to more than 60 additional years in prison.
The family law firm he previously worked for, Peters, Murdaugh, Parker, Eltzroth & Detrick, was renamed the Parker Law Group. Alex’s older brother, Randolph “Randy” Murdaugh IV, still works at the firm.
Maggie Murdaugh
Margaret Kennedy Branstetter Murdaugh, who went by Maggie, was mother to sons Paul and Buster. She met her husband Alex when she was a student at the University of South Carolina in 1991, and they married in 1993.
She was 52 when she and Paul were shot and killed in 2021 at the family’s hunting property in Colleton County. Alex and Maggie were reportedly living separately at the time of her death.
Paul Murdaugh, pictured here in court in a still from the documentary “Low Country: The Murdaugh Dynasty,” faced significant prison time for allegedly boating under the influence.
(HBO Max)
Paul Murdaugh
Paul Terry Murdaugh was born on April 14, 1999, to Alex and Maggie. He grew up with a love of the outdoors and enjoyed hunting alongside his father and older brother. He was 22 and in his junior year at the University of South Carolina when he was killed.
Paul reportedly abused alcohol as a teenager and young adult, and his friends have said they called his intoxicated alter ego “Timmy” because his behavior changed significantly when he was drinking. In February 2019, Paul was accused of being behind the wheel of his family’s boat while drunk, crashing the boat into a bridge in the early hours of the morning. There were five other people on board with Paul, and one passenger, 19-year-old Mallory Beach, was killed in the crash.
Paul, who was also 19 at the time, had a blood-alcohol level three times over the legal limit when he was hospitalized after the crash. He was charged with felony boating under the influence two months later. He was murdered alongside his mother in 2021 before the trial for the charges he faced in connection with the crash could begin.
Buster Murdaugh
Born Richard Alexander Murdaugh Jr., the eldest Murdaugh son went by “Buster.” He attended Wofford College for his undergraduate studies and went on to study law at his parents’ alma mater, the University of South Carolina. By the spring of 2021, Buster had been kicked out of law school, reportedly for low grades and plagiarism.
Following the deaths of his mother and brother, Buster surfaced in news reports after increased interest in the family unearthed a loose connection between him and a man named Stephen Smith, a former classmate who was killed in 2015. Rumors of an intimate relationship between Smith and Buster, and of the Murdaughs’ involvement in his death, swirled, but Buster denied the allegations.
When his father was on trial for the murders of Paul and Maggie, Buster testified as a witness for the defense, saying that his father’s behavior on the night of the killings and the following weeks was not abnormal. He also said Alex was “heartbroken” on the night they died.
Buster married his longtime girlfriend Brooklynn White in May 2025. His wife is an attorney, but Buster never returned to law school.
Buster Murdaugh, left, and his then-girlfriend Brooklynn White at the double murder trial for his father. He testified in his father’s defense.
(Jeff Blake / Associated Press)
Randolph Murdaugh III
Randolph Murdaugh III was Alex’s father and one of the men who established the Murdaugh family’s legal prominence. Like his father and grandfather, Randolph served as the solicitor of the 14th judicial circuit in South Carolina, which serves Allendale, Colleton, Hampton, Beaufort and Jasper counties. In addition to Alex, Randolph had three other children with wife Elizabeth “Libby” Alexander Murdaugh: Lynn Goettee, Randolph Murdaugh IV and John Marvin Murdaugh. The couple had 10 grandchildren.
When Paul got into the boat crash in 2019, Randolph was his first call. A year earlier, Randolph was honored with the Order of the Palmetto, the highest civilian honor awarded by the governor of South Carolina. A testament to his influence, the award recognizes lifetime achievements and contributions to the state.
He died in June 2021 after a long period of health problems — three days after Paul and Maggie were murdered.
Mallory Beach and her family
Beach was a teenager from South Carolina who was described by friends and family as a loving young woman with dreams of becoming an interior designer. She and her boyfriend, Anthony Cook, were friends with Paul, and in February 2019 the couple boarded the Murdaugh family boat with a few other friends before it crashed into a bridge in Beaufort, S.C.
Beach’s body was missing after the crash and was recovered about a week later. Her family brought a wrongful death lawsuit against the Murdaughs, which eventually cracked open inquiries into Alex’s finances. The family later settled with Maggie’s estate and Buster in 2023 for an undisclosed amount. They were brought into the case because Paul used Maggie’s credit card and Buster’s ID to buy alcohol. The Beach family also reached a multimillion-dollar settlement with the convenience store chain where Paul purchased the alcohol, and in 2024, Alex’s insurance company agreed to pay the family $500,000.
Gloria Satterfield
Satterfield was the Murdaugh’s longtime housekeeper and nanny, who had a maternal-like relationship with Paul and Buster. She was the widow of David Michael Satterfield and had two sons, Michael “Tony” Satterfield and Brian Harriott.
In February 2018, Satterfield allegedly tripped and fell at the Murdaugh’s home and was hospitalized for weeks before she died at 57. Alex and Maggie were mentioned by name in Satterfield’s obituary as “those she loved as her family.”
When the cause of Satterfield’s death was being investigated, Murdaugh claimed Satterfield tripped over the family’s dogs, causing her to fall and hit her head, and he encouraged her two sons to bring a wrongful death claim against him. Murdaugh introduced Satterfield’s sons to Cory Fleming, a fellow lawyer, who represented them in the case and schemed with Murdaugh to collect on his homeowner’s insurance policies. The settlement was reportedly more than $4 million, none of which Satterfield’s sons saw.
Fleming was sentenced to nearly four years in prison for his involvement in the scheme and Murdaugh admitted to orchestrating the plot and intercepting the insurance payout meant for Satterfield’s family, depositing the money directly into his personal account. He was sentenced to 40 years in prison for that crime, plus a slew of other financial crimes he pleaded guilty to in 2023.
Stephen Smith
Smith was born in Lexington County, S.C., and attended Wade Hampton High School, where he was classmates with Buster Murdaugh, graduating in 2014. He was found dead on a rural road in Hampton County in July 2015, and his death was initially ruled as a hit and run.
In 2021, South Carolina law enforcement reopened Smith’s case based on leads uncovered in the Murdaugh double homicide investigation. The Murdaugh name was mentioned over 40 times throughout the course of the investigation, according to a report from FITSNews, a local outlet. Detectives reportedly looked at Buster as a possible person of interest in the case, who was rumored to have been romantically involved with Smith, but the connection was never proved and Buster was never named a suspect.
Lío Mehiel has been working for a moment like “After the Hunt” for a long time.
Directed by Luca Guadagnino, this thorny morality play of a film set at Yale University pits well-liked professor Alma (played by Julia Roberts) against both her protegé, Maggie (Ayo Edebiri), as well as her longtime friend and colleague Hank (Andrew Garfield) during a scandal that risks her entire academic career.
Amid that starry A-list cast, the actor plays Maggie’s partner, Alex. The film, which had its world premiere in August at the Venice Film Festival, is Mehiel’s most high-profile project yet.
“There is so much time as an artist where you are doing the work and nobody cares and you have to find within yourself the motivation and the commitment and the drive to keep going,” Mehiel tells The Times. “Because you know that when you are going to be able to reach people, it will be worth it.”
Such a step has been years in the making. Mehiel, who lived in Puerto Rico until they were 5 years old, began their creative endeavors almost as soon as they arrived in New York City, first as a salsa dancer and later as an actor. By the time they were in fifth grade they were attending Broadway auditions, eventually booking a role in the 2003 revival of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” starring Ashley Judd and Jason Patric.
(L to R) Lio Mehiel as Alex and Ayo Edebiri as Maggie in AFTER THE HUNT, from Amazon MGM Studios.
But as they began finding their own sense of self and body, they also found the kind of opportunities that led them to “After the Hunt.” That began in earnest back in 2023, when they starred in Vuk Lungulov-Klotz’s film “Mutt” as Feña, a role they booked after cold-emailing the director and telling them they’d do anything to win that part. The film chronicled a particularly hectic day in the life of a young trans man in New York City, as he struggles to rekindle old relationships he’d severed since he’d transitioned. Mehiel’s soulful performance won them a Special Jury Award for Acting at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, putting them on the map as a trans Latine performer to watch.
“Moving forward from ‘Mutt,’ I was really interested in building on that momentum to what’s next,” they say. Not just in terms of their career but in the broader cultural conversation around contemporary queer and trans representation. The following year, they returned to Sundance with Alessandra Lacorazza’s “In the Summers,” which walked away from the festival with the U.S. Dramatic Grand Jury prize — the first for a film directed by a Latina director. Like “Mutt,” that sun-dappled film found Mehiel breathing life into a trans character navigating a thorny relationship with their father (played by renowned Puerto Rican rapper Residente).
Mehiel has long been building a body of work that centers on the very work of having a body. Just this past summer, they visited the Salton Sea for a performance installation titled “angels of a drowning myth.” In photos from that day, Mehiel is seen naked and half-submerged into that so-called sea, posing alongside a bust of their own chest made six months after they’d received top surgery. A portrait of a body twice represented, Mehiel’s piece stressed the solidity and malleability of their own body, and the beauty they find within and around it. Their work moves past familiar ideas of the body in transition, gleefully embracing the messiness of the queer experience and refusing the easy siren call of visibility.
“‘After the Hunt,’ is such a beautiful example of that because Alex is a queer and trans character, but we just see them getting home from a run, taking their shirt off, being with their partner, dealing with stuff that has nothing to do with their queerness,” Mehiel says.
That moment Alex first appears on screen is quintessential Mehiel. Not just because of the honeyed intimacy their sweaty, bare chest exudes. But because their appearance immediately reframes everything audiences have heard about this seemingly militant, radical social justice warrior. Alex at first appears as a figure of “woke” culture there to defy the older generation Roberts’ Alma comes to stand for. But there’s more to them than that.
“Alex doesn’t represent all queer people who have a political orientation in the world, all queer people who might attend a protest,” they explain. “I think what Luca did and what Nora did in the script was to give us all an opportunity to move away from identity politics. Instead, they gave each of the characters enough meat on their bones that they get to be complex, messy characters.”
“After the Hunt” may focus on complicated ethical questions surrounding sexual assault allegations at a university, but within that plot, Mehiel sees also a chance for viewers to catch a glimpse of characters like Maggie and Alex who may not otherwise be centered in such stories.
“I’m just excited that there is more exposure that people are having to queer and trans people and to queer relationships, and how that can fit in the context of a ‘normative’ world,” they add. “This is a movie with Julia Roberts, one of our biggest stars and crown jewels of Hollywood and of American cinema. There’s going to be a lot of folks that are going to see it because Julia is in it. And then they’re also going to get to experience a queer and trans person on screen who is likable in some moments and unlikable in others, just as much as every other character.”
That’s been Mehiel’s purpose for years now: to expand what queer and trans characters can look like on stage, on screen and, in turn, in real life. At a time when these communities are vilified by those who wish to harm them, Mehiel insists on the importance of such normalized visibility.
Lio Mehiel seen at the Los Angeles Premiere of Amazon MGM Studios’ “After The Hunt” at Academy Museum of Motion Pictures on October 04, 2025 in Los Angeles, California.
(Photo by Stewart Cook / Amazon MGM Studios via Getty Images)
“Honestly, exposure to these experiences creates connection more than anything and allows people to feel comfortable,” they add. “Because the political climate right now — for the Latine community and for the trans community — is really hard and heartbreaking and challenging. And I think so much of it has to do with people feeling like they don’t know who these people are.”
A central kernel of the premise of “After the Hunt” is that you never know what someone is going through. And, more to the point, that making assumptions about other people’s experience can be extremely dangerous.
“This movie really serves as a mirror to the people that are watching it,” Mehiel insists. The film confronts audiences with their own biases and refuses any tidy conclusions.
But for Mehiel, the film will forever be remembered as a highlight of a career that is only bound to get bigger and more exciting. Just this year, they spent the summer at the Williamstown Theatre Festival starring in Jeremy O. Harris’ new play as well as serving as head of production for “Mother, Daughter, Holy Spirit,” a grassroots fundraiser for the Trans Justice Funding Project, all while continuing to pursue their various interests as artist, writer, and filmmaker. In that context, “After the Hunt” stands now less as a calling card than as a reminder of how far they’ve come and yet how much further they want to go. That film, now playing in theaters and coming soon to Prime Video, will widen the scope and reach of their artistry.
“Watching it, I was like, ‘I fit right into the fabric of the movie,’” they say. “On a personal journey level, I feel confident that I have the skill, the talent and the experience at this point to work with the masters that I dream of working with (if the sexy French filmmaker, Julia Ducournau, ever reads this interview, she should know that I want to work with her).”
Or, in much simpler terms that echo an ethos they’ve brought to bear on and off screen: “I just feel ready and able to actualize the things that I have been dreaming about for a long time.”
It’s confusing enough that senior Maggie Kearin attends Louisville High in Woodland Hills and will soon attend the University of Louisville in Kentucky on a full scholarship.
Let’s forget about the two Louisvilles for a moment. Did you know she has a scholarship awaiting her based on her skills in field hockey? And the high school she attends doesn’t have a field hockey team.
She earned the offer based on her play in club field hockey. At Louisville High, she’s perfectly happy playing volleyball and soccer when outsiders have no idea she’s one of the top field hockey players in Southern California.
Her father is Jeff Kearin, the former Loyola High and Cal State Northridge football coach who’s the JV football coach at Crespi and has been transporting her for years to competitions. He consulted with others about whether Maggie should go to a high school that has field hockey, and they told him being good in several sports will help her versatility in field hockey.
Maggie has been playing the sport since she was 5.
“She came home one night from a sleepover, ‘I want to play the game with a stick.’ I thought it was lacrosse,” her father said.
Now she has a way to pay for her college education. “No one is happier than Mom and Dad,” her father said.
This is a daily look at the positive happenings in high school sports. To submit any news, please email [email protected].
Over the last decade or so, publishers of American genre fiction have borrowed a page from Hollywood’s playbook by essentially packaging novels like films, grafting together collaborators from two different A-lists: those that feature bestselling novelists and major celebrities. Large commercial rewards have been reaped from these crossbred literary partnerships. Bill and Hillary Clinton, to name just two examples, have both enjoyed bestsellers with big-time writing partners James Patterson and Louise Penny, respectively.
Now we have Reese Witherspoon, already a major force in American publishing, teaming up with Harlan Coben, one of the world’s biggest selling thriller writers, to create “Gone Before Goodbye,” a book that taps into our fascination with the follies of the impossibly rich at the same time that it ponders real questions about the ethics of social engineering via medical advances in organ regeneration.
Now, it must be said that book critics are cynical snobs by nature, and something like “Gone Before Goodbye,” which at first blush seems to have been a project drummed up in a talent agency conference room, is prone to be received with a derisory scoff and a stiff-armed shove from those who are just waiting to sink their teeth into the new Thomas Pynchon novel. But this is Harlan Coben and Reese Witherspoon we’re talking about here, two formidable talents whose track record for delivering smart entertainment is unimpeachable. “Gone Before Goodbye” is not some magpie creature patched together from shopworn thriller tropes, even if certain plot elements feel a bit much. Instead, what the two authors have delivered is a story that pulls the reader deep into a rarefied world where ethics are mere technicalities and the needs of the rich take precedence over petty trivialities like, say, morality.
The book’s protagonist, Maggie McCabe, a brilliant Army combat surgeon who, along with her husband, Marc, and their friend Trace, teamed up after college to create WorldCures Alliance, “one of the world’s most dynamic charities, specializing in providing medical services for the most impoverished,” working as field surgeons risking their lives on the front lines in Afghanistan and the Middle East. The trio once had big plans centered on the prototype of an artificial heart they designed, THUMPR7, which they were convinced would change the world by extending the lives of millions, rich, poor or otherwise.
When the book begins, these plans have been torn asunder: Marc, as it transpires, has been killed in a rebel attack on a refugee camp in Libya. Trace has gone missing along with the artificial heart prototype. And Maggie has lost her medical license due to a hiccup of bad judgment on her part. At loose ends and broke, Maggie, and the reader, are then swept into a strange adventure when a successful cosmetic surgeon named Evan Barlow approaches her with an offer to wipe out her family’s debts in exchange for Maggie committing to perform surgery for a client in Russia who is willing to pay her millions.
Off Maggie goes into the dirty world of the Russian oligarchy, in a city called Rublevka, “perhaps the wealthiest residential area in the world,” where a shady creep named Oleg Ragoravich, one of the 10 wealthiest and most reclusive Russian billionaires, has a job for her. It’s well below Maggie’s pay grade: Oleg wants augmentation mammoplasty for his mistress Nadia. Ragoravich is predictably oleaginous, a man with a file cabinet full of hidden agendas, but he is charmingly persuasive, and the money has already been wired into Maggie’s account. She is in before she even has a chance to back out.
Naturally, there is a great deal more involved than a simple boob job. Without giving too much away, Witherspoon and Coben in this novel have tapped into the wealthy’s obsession with using technology to foster super-agers. As the stakes get higher, the plot ripples out into larger and larger concentric circles that envelop Maggie’s life and everyone in it. But there is so much to take in while this happens, so much voyeuristic pleasure to be had as Maggie acclimates into an almost impossibly lush and lavish world that toggles between Russia and Dubai, the de facto playground for raffish oligarchs intent on bad behavior.
Witherspoon and Coben revel in the details. The plane that spirits Maggie from New York to Russia is a “full-size 180-seat Airbus A320 renovated for private use,” kitted out with a 65-inch contoured TV, a gourmet kitchen and a marble ensuite bathroom with an “oversize rain showerhead.” Ragoravich’s dacha is a “garish and almost grotesque” palace clad in marble that makes Maggie think of Versailles, but in a way that makes Versailles seem dumpy. Everything within is “not so much an attempt to classily suggest opulence and power as to batter you with it.” This is the kind of thriller that invites you into a gilded empyrean that compels you and repels you in equal measure.
The book’s plot mechanics hum along with great pace and verve, even if a few of its particulars are too far-fetched to swallow. With “Gone Before Goodbye,” the two authors deliver a fun ride into a shadow land where the rich are convinced that money can insulate them from everything, including their own mortality — even if they have to murder a few people to get there.
Weingarten is the author of “Thirsty: William Mulholland, California Water, and the Real Chinatown.”
Downton Abbey debuted in 2010, establishing itself as a cherished series that spanned six seasons plus two earlier movies.
The conclusion served as a tribute to Dame Maggie Smith, who passed away aged 89 last September.
Her character, The Dowager Countess, was written off by her death in the 2022 picture, Downton Abbey: A New Era, though her memory was celebrated in Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale, reports the Manchester Evening News.
Michelle Dockery has addressed the ending of the final Downton Abbey(Image: Nick Briggs/Carnival Films)
As the finale wrapped up with an emotional ending, following Lady Mary as a divorcee and single mother overcoming scandal, viewers saw visions of the family and servants dancing together with Violet Crawley, with the camera resting on a portrait of Dame Maggie.
However, Michelle has now revealed there were alternate endings in mind.
She told The Hollywood Reporter: “There were a couple of versions of the ending. There was another version where you saw Mary go back to work, she goes into the library and she sits at her desk.
“They decided to end it on the tribute to Maggie, which I think is the best ending. I always felt that it was the right way to finish.
Dame Maggie Smith as Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham in Downton Abbey(Image: ITV)
“[Mary, Cora and Robert] are saying their goodbyes and I think that’s for the audience – this feeling of moving on and saying farewell to each other.”
She added: “It feels quite hopeful. I also like that at the end of this story, Mary ends up as a single woman. There’s a new chapter ahead of her, she’s happier, and she’s excited to take the reins and become the lady of the house. It’s the end, but it feels like it’s ongoing.”
Creator Julian Fellowes previously spoke about dedicating the film to Dame Maggie: “I think we all felt that if there was a third film, we wanted it to be haunted by Maggie.
Downton Abbey came to an end with a third and final film(Image: AP)
“There is a theme of Maggie going through the film, and then at the end, you see her when Mary is having all her flashbacks. I like that. She was an iconic figure … And that’s another reason to finish.”
He added: “I think the actors had had enough – in the nicest way, there were a lot of good friendships and we’ll always meet as members of the Downton club … But I also feel that, in life, you must know when to let go of things, whether it’s professional or romantic or anything else.
“There is a moment when you think, ‘It’s time to bring this to an end.’ And I felt that about the show.”
