The body of scandalized South Carolina attorney Alex Murdaugh’s former housekeeper will be exhumed as part of a new investigation into her mysterious death, officials have announced.
Gloria Satterfield, 57, — who died in February 2018 at the home of Murdaugh — will be disinterred with the permission of her family, the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) said Friday.
“This is a complex process that will take weeks, not days,” SLED spokesperson Renee Wunderlich told news station WLTX-TV.
Murdaugh, who currently faces a litany of fraud charges — including faking his own murder to provide his son with a $10 million insurance payout, claimed that Satterfield died after falling over a family dog and sustaining serious injuries.
Her death triggered a $4.3 million life insurance windfall that Murdaugh is accused of stealing away from her two sons with the aid of another lawyer.
Officials are now delving into the circumstances around Satterfield’s death, noting that a local coroner was never alerted to the accident.
Murdaugh, an attorney, has since been indicted for defrauding her heirs and stealing settlement money from clients he represented in other cases.
Murdaugh’s wife and one of his sons were found shot dead on the family estate in June 2021 and no arrests have been made or charges filed in relation to those murders.
Two months later, Murdaugh was busted for scheming to have himself fatally shot so that his surviving son could land a $10 million insurance payout.
He was arrested after the man he hired only managed to graze him with a bullet rather than finish him off.
The botched plot unfolded just a day after Murdaugh was accused of stealing funds from the firm established by his great-grandfather.
Murdaugh is currently charged with stealing more than $8 million from former clients.
