Newly released body camera footage shows police pulling personal effects like Benadryl and chewing tobacco from handcuffed Alex Murdaugh's pockets outside a Florida rehab as he pleads for his prescription medications.
The partially redacted footage, obtained from the Orange County Sheriff's Office by Fox News Digital, was captured around 11 a.m. on October 14, 2021.
About a month earlier, the disgraced legal scion had quit his law firm and had been shot alongside a South Carolina country road in a bungled assisted suicide plot. Months earlier, Murdaugh's wife and son had been killed outside their family hunting lodge. Last March, Murdaugh was sentenced to life in prison for their deaths.
In the newly released body camera footage, Orange County deputies were acting on two felony warrants connected to missing life insurance settlement money from Gloria Satterfield, Murdaugh's late housekeeper who died on his property in 2018, according to arresting documents obtained by Fox News Digital.
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Murdaugh can be seen taking long swigs of a water bottle before he is handcuffed in the body camera footage. When an officer asked whether he is armed, a restrained Murdaugh replies that he "has some ChapStick and tobacco."
An officer can be heard counting out $39 taken from Murdaugh in the footage before they seat him lengthwise in the back of their police cruiser.
When Murdaugh requests his prescription medication – a blue pill for "stomach problems" – officers shake a pill into the cap of a medicine bottle to pass it into his mouth, then give him water to swallow.
One of Murdaugh's attorneys, Jim Griffin, told ABC 4 that he believed the medication helped Murdaugh deal with the side effects of opioid withdrawal: "[Murdaugh] was having significant diarrhea issues," Griffin said. "I believe that's what the medication was for."
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Griffin said that the October arrest came as a surprise to Murdaugh's legal team, because they were already cooperating with prosecutors:
"I had previously scheduled telephone conference with folks in the U.S. Attorney's Office regarding their financial investigation, and we were in the process of talking about how that would proceed," Griffin told ABC 4. "We were under the impression that the financial piece was going to be headed up by the FBI, and the U.S. Attorney General's Office stepped in, the U.S. Attorney's Office was surprised as well."
Alex Murdaugh pleaded guilty to 22 of roughly 100 charges against him in 2023, and was accused of stealing up to $10 million from various organizations and victims in addition to killing his wife and son.
Earlier this month, Murdaugh was ordered to pay $1.8 million to 16 different parties, including the victims of his son's boat crash that left Mallory Beach dead in 2019 and victims of the former lawyer's financial crimes.
Murdaugh's defense team also sought a new murder trial, claiming that Colleton County Court Clerk Becky Hill had tampered with jurors in their requests for a new trial. Justice Jean Toal denied that request last month.
