A report Thursday by The State newspaper reveals Alex Murdaugh paid Eddie Smith more than $155,000 in an eight-month span starting late last year.
Smith is a former client of Murdaugh, and self-professed close friend who thought of Alex "like a brother."
Smith is also Murdaugh's accused co-conspirator in a suicide-for-hire life insurance fraud case that sent Murdaugh to the hospital in September 2021 with a reported gunshot wound to the head.
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On top of all that, attorney's for Murdaugh have claimed Smith was Murdaugh's longtime drug dealer, responsible for fomenting Murdaugh's apparently well-hidden addiction to prescription pain pills over the last 20 years.
Murdaugh's attorneys have said that drug addiction is partially to blame for Murdaugh's spate of alleged financial crimes brought to light in the months since his wife and son, Maggie and Paul, were murdered.
The State reports the last payment Murdaugh is accused of making to Smith came on May 28, just 10 days before the June 7 slayings of Maggie and Paul outside the family's home in Colleton County. No suspects have been charged in connection to their deaths, but Alex Murdaugh himself has not been ruled out as a person of interest.
Each of the payments came in the form of 17 cashier's checks between October 2020 and May 2021, according to records reviewed by investigative reporters John Monk and Jake Shore of The State and The Island Packet.
Each of the checks was reportedly written from the same bank account in which Murdaugh is accused of depositing millions of dollars of wrongful death settlement money he's accused of shadily stealing from the family of his former housekeeper, Gloria Satterfield.
Murdaugh opened the bank account under the name "Forge," which prosecutors have claimed Murdaugh used to disguise fraudulent financial transactions using the name value of Forge Consulting, a legitimate firm that handles structured payments for attorneys and their clients.
As for the Satterfield family, they have sued Murdaugh and several of his alleged co-conspirators in the alleged $4.3 million settlement theft scheme. All defendants in the case except Murdaugh have settled out of court for more than $6 million, so far.
Meantime, Murdaugh's attorneys filed a motion this week saying Murdaugh shouldn't have to pay back any of the roughly $3 million he's specifically accused of stealing in that case because the Satterfields have already been justly compensated by the other defendants.
As for the payments to Eddie Smith, the State's and Island Packet's report Thursday comes three weeks after the papers first reported authorities were investigating the possibility Alex Murdaugh had been writing checks for drugs.
The earlier report, citing confidential sources, said Murdaugh was writing checks to someone who would then pay a courier to obtain drugs for Murdaugh from members of a well-known Colleton County street gang, the Cowboys.
Thursday's report by the paper didn't explicitly link the earlier report about Murdaugh's alleged Cowboys connection to the checks paid to Smith.
While reportedly making large payments to Smith earlier this year, Murdaugh also received even larger loans from former law partner John E. Parker during the same time frame.
In a lawsuit for debt collection filed in late October, Parker alleged he loaned Murdaugh $150,000 in March 2021, then $77,000 in May. The lawsuit didn't specify what the loans were for.
Those loans from Parker preceded yet another loan of $250,000 to Murdaugh in July, a month after Maggie and Paul Murdaugh were murdered, making the grand total $477,000.
Court-appointed controllers of the Murdaugh's finances have since petitioned a court to issue a stay on potential reimbursement to Parker, after Murdaugh quickly confessed judgment days after the lawsuit was filed.
Murdaugh is additionally accused of stealing potentially millions of dollars from the Peters Murdaugh Parker Eltzroth & Detrick law firm in Hampton, where he worked with Parker and which his own great-grandfather founded in 1910.