Authorities announced on Thursday that prominent South Carolina attorney Alex Murdaugh was 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. The heirs of Satterfield, a family housekeeper who died three years ago in what was initially described as an accidental fall, have insisted they received none of the proceeds from a $4.3 million settlement they said was orchestrated in secret by Murdaugh.

The 52-year-old Murdaugh was arrested in Orlando, Florida, upon his release from a drug rehabilitation facility. Murdaugh claimed that he was shot in the head on a roadside in September, according to the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (“SLED”). He faces two felony counts of obtaining property by false pretenses and is expected to appear at an extradition hearing on Friday before he’s arraigned in Columbia, South Carolina. 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.

Murdaugh, a well-known attorney in the South Carolina Lowcountry, was thrust 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. From the beginning, authorities have considered Murdaugh a person of interest in the deaths of his wife and son, though his attorneys insist that his client was not involved. Murdaugh was fired in June from his job at his family’s law firm after being accused of embezzlement. He was 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.

Editorial credit: Nagel Photography / Shutterstock.com