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    Southern Gothic

    This story exemplifies so much of the dysfunction of rich white folks in the South



    https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1438306653548519430?s=21
    Last edited by ursus arctos; 16-09-2021, 18:29.

    #2
    Thanks for starting the thread, Ursus.

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      #3
      Meanwhile

      - the family are all lawyers and have run the prosecutors' offices in the 5 counties in the southern tip of South Carolina since 1920.

      - the family also have their own personal injury law firm, which is absolutely not at all in any way a hint of a conflict of interest.

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        #4
        Paying a hitman to get the life insurance is a dreadful idea. It only gets worse when half of your family has already been murdered in mysterious circumstances and your finances are unravelling.

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          #5
          Meanwhile...

          - The family of the housekeeper claim that they never received a penny of the $500,000 settlement.

          - The settlement was paid by insurance, not by the Murdaugh family

          - The housekeeper's family were introduced to the lawyer who negotiated that settlement by... Alex Murdaugh.

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            #6
            Meanwhile -

            - Paying a hitman to kill you in order to get life insurance is a particularly terrible idea if you claim it's because suicide wasn't covered. That is because your life insurance does cover you for suicide unless it was taken out in the preceding two years. And if you were a personal injury attorney you'd probably be expected to have some idea how personal insurance works...

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              #7
              That arrangement is certainly unusual, but not unique

              The outsourcing of essential public services to well-connected (and conflicted) locals is a key element of the social and political structure in such places.

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                #8
                Also a bad idea to hire your primary drug dealer (opioids) as the hit man

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                  #9
                  https://twitter.com/nbcnews/status/1438533334104219659?s=21

                  It is of course further evidence of dysfunction that someone facing these charges gets to turn himself in

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                    #10
                    I really hope he pronounces his name like Taggart would.

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                      #11
                      I think the chances of that are remote

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                        #12
                        SB, have you played golf in Hampton or Beaufort Counties?

                        Ive only driven through them and that was quite a while ago.

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                          #13
                          This thing's going to peel like an onion, isn't it? I hope someone's already writing the book, because I'll pre-order.

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                            #14
                            There are going to be multiple books and films/television shows

                            I guarantee you that folks are scouting plantation locations as we speak

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                              #15
                              Originally posted by ursus arctos View Post
                              SB, have you played golf in Hampton or Beaufort Counties?

                              Ive only driven through them and that was quite a while ago.
                              I've played golf in Beaufort County, but that was a decade ago. And that was in the utter weirdness of Hilton Head which I think is completely detached from any part of reality, even the kind of reality that the Murdaugh family lived in. It's basically a Caribbean Island Exclave for wealthy and tasteless and rich southern Americans to play golf. I don't think there's a "there" there, so to speak. I've not been in the surrounding county except on the drivepast on the same trip - heading from Charleston to Savannah.

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                                #16
                                The Beeb is onto the story, though they have gone with a slightly insensitive headline: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-58577936

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                                  #17
                                  Given the number of deaths, the legal corruption, the financial corruption, the decades of back-story, the drugs (and low grade drugs, at that - there seemed to be meth mentioned somewhere), and the fact the each new thing adds an extra level of implausibility, I was thinking about how this would play as a TV show.

                                  I think if it was a fictional show, someone would have pitched it as one of those Premium TV Shows that gets put on HBO, and has a couple of film stars as the lead cast, but people would stop watching in season two after too many ridiculous and implausible things happened.

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                                    #18
                                    Yeah, Hilton Head is very much its own separate world from the rest of the county/state.

                                    I see that he has still only been charged with insurance fraud and filing a false police report, so I would be very surprised if he isn't already out on bail.

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                                      #19
                                      It wouldn't work for more than six or eight episodes, even with a lot of plantation porn and Spanish Moss.

                                      The hit man/drug deal had convictions for crystal meth.

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                                        #20
                                        Meanwhile is Mr Murdaugh still allowed to practice law? (Allowing for the fact that presently he'll no doubt be otherwise occupied)

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                                          #21
                                          This is one of the premier "golf resort communities" in Hampton County



                                          and their logo

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                                            #22
                                            Good grief, look at those haircuts. Hardly Brick, Maggie and Big Daddy are they?

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                                              #23
                                              Originally posted by Amor de Cosmos View Post
                                              Meanwhile is Mr Murdaugh still allowed to practice law? (Allowing for the fact that presently he'll no doubt be otherwise occupied)
                                              Oh, it will take the South Carolina Bar at least a year or two to disbar him.

                                              Though his partners have expelled him from the firm and will sue as soon as they have a better idea of how much money he embezzled.

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                                                #24
                                                Standup guy, arranging to get himself whacked so his kid would be rich.

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                                                  #25
                                                  I increasingly doubt that part of the story, now.

                                                  As I observed, he didn't have to get killed to get the insurance payout - suicide would have been fine. And he's the kind of lawyer who'd probably know what's covered by his insurance.

                                                  Also, when you hire someone to shoot you in the head and hand them the gun, they are very unlikely to hit you in the head, but miss so badly that you're still in a position to call 9-1-1

                                                  Also, the fact that the police described it as a "grazing injury" while his weird lawyer (who might have his own mini-series, I think) said he had a skull fracture.

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