Mandy Matney kept a harsh spotlight trained on South Carolina’s Murdaugh family until they became impossible for anyone to ignore

Real-life villains don’t come more sharply drawn than Alex Murdaugh, a greedy and ghoulish personal injuries lawyer who casts a haunting shadow over the state of South Carolina. For nearly a century, his father and grandfather were the prosecutors for a five-county district while also running a powerful private law firm.

But it wasn’t until the small hours of 24 February 2019 that the dark veil over the Murdaugh family’s dealings began to slip. That’s when Alex’s son Paul is alleged to have plowed the family’s 17-foot bay boat into a bridge abutting Parris Island, the nation’s largest Marine recruit depot. Among the three people cast overboard was an ebullient 19-year-old former high school soccer player named Mallory Beach. She was found dead in the murky tidewaters near the crash site after a seven-day search.