In a taped interview five years before withdrawing the claim in a federal lawsuit, Alex Murdaugh blamed his family’s pets for Gloria Satterfield‘s death.
During a news conference on Monday, Satterfield estate lawyers Ronnie Richter and Eric Bland chastised Murdaugh for what they called a “misinformation campaign.”
They made public an internal report and a taped interview that clearly contradicted the convicted murderer’s most recent account of events surrounding the housekeeper’s killing.
On February 2, 2018, she fell down the brick stairs of the family’s previous South Carolina home and died three weeks later.
The lawyers’ harsh critiques of Murdaugh come in reaction to the criminal admitting in a federal civil lawsuit last week for the first time that he lied when he informed his insurance companies that the family’s four dogs caused the 67-year-old housekeeper’s slip and fall.
“No dogs were involved in the fall of Gloria Satterfield,” Murdaugh’s attorneys said in response to Nautilus Insurance Company’s fraud action against him. “After Ms. Satterfield’s death, the defendant invented Ms. Satterfield’s purported statement that dogs caused her fall in order to force his insurers to make a settlement payment.”
The letter in issue was a response to a fraud case brought against Murdaugh and his alleged collaborators by Nautilus Insurance Company. According to the complaint, he persuaded the Satterfield sons to sue him, then pocketed the $4.3 million without paying them a dime.
Nautilus paid out $3.8 million, the majority of the settlement, and is attempting to recoup that amount from Murdaugh.
Murdaugh also pushed the insurance company to pursue the Satterfield sons for the stolen money in the paper.
The Satterfield estate’s attorneys collected a total of $7.5 million in judgments for Murdaugh’s theft, none of which was paid by Nautilus.
Murdaugh told the investigator in the 13-minute tape from 2018 that he hurried home and saw Satterfield sitting up with a lot of blood surrounding her and on the side of her face.
“She indicated that the dogs caused her to fall,” he said. “I’m guessing that when Gloria pulled up, the dogs rushed her for affection.”
Bubba, a yellow Lab, Bourbon, a chocolate Lab, Blue, a Labradoodle, and Sassy, a German shorthaired pointer, were the Murdaughs’ dogs at the time.
Bourbon had just returned from obedience school when he was one.
“The problem is, and this is why we sent Bourbon to obedience school, as I mentioned earlier, she’s extremely hyper.” “All the dogs get excited and compete to get petted and attention,” he said.
Murdaugh’s insurance would not have been liable for Satterfield’s death if the dogs had not caused the slip and fall, Bland said during the news conference.
Murdaugh was sentenced to two life sentences in March for murdering shooting his 22-year-old son, Paul, and his 52-year-old wife, Maggie, in June 2021.
“While we are not parties to the lawsuit,” Richter stated, “the continued attacks on the Satterfields cannot and will not be ignored.”
He went on to call Murdaugh a “well-documented liar.”