Murdaugh country: New book pulls back a Lowcountry curtain | Opinion

How wicked can you get?

Alex Murdaugh murdered his own wife and son at dog kennels deep in the scrubby pinelands of the South Carolina Lowcountry, a failed effort to hide a mountain of white-collar theft from “the least of these” in society.

Well, how about the time a man kneeling at a church altar in Hampton County was plugged full of bullets from a 38 Special while taking communion?

That murderer was so wicked nobody bothered to attend when he was led to the electric chair, except for famed evangelist Billy Sunday who offered prayer as the unrepentant convict recited the 23rd Psalm.

Both those stories are included in “Wicked Hampton County,” a new book by the longtime editor of the Hampton County Guardian, Michael M. DeWitt Jr.

For perspective, The History Press and Arcadia Publishing based in Charleston have published books on a number of communities in the “Wicked” series. That includes “Wicked Beaufort,” written by Alexia Jones Helsley.

And there’s “Wicked Greenville” and, needless to say, two volumes of “Wicked Charleston.”

So how wicked can rural Hampton County be?

It was best known for the Watermelon Festival until Alex Murdaugh became a household name worldwide for layers of wickedness still being unearthed after four years of public shame.

The question has been, How did we get into this mess, with the so-called elites of society and leaders of the law getting away with so much for so long?

That’s where DeWitt’s new book can help, though it’s not an answer he sets about to deliver. He has been working on the book as a rainy-day project for years, poring through old issues of the 143-year-old Guardian for jaw-dropping tales.

An inmate froze to death in the old county jail, which had no heat or plumbing. It’s where vigilante mobs repeatedly came to haul prisoners away for lynching.

But a heroine emerged from that cesspool one night when the jailor’s 14-year-old daughter held a pistol on a mob of men to keep them from killing a Black inmate.

The book digs to the roots of Hampton County, created at the end of the Reconstruction period that followed the Civil War.

“Out of war, ruin, racism, fear and hate, Hampton County was born,” DeWitt writes.

His family has lived there for almost 300 years. He has edited the weekly paper for 20 years.

And he is finishing a much closer look at the Murdaugh question in a book coming soon from Evening Post Publishing in Charleston called “The Fall of the House of Murdaugh.”

That will tell much more about how the Murdaughs behaved as keepers of the law in the five-county area of the Lowcountry making up the 14th Judicial Circuit.

Alex Murdaugh’s father, grandfather and great-grandfather were the lead prosecutors, or solicitors, in that circuit for 86 years, and Alex rode his long-secret wave of crime equipped with a badge from the solicitor’s office and a dashboard blue light.

DeWitt puts flesh on the first of those solicitors, Alex’s great-grandfather J. Randolph Murdaugh Sr. We see him prosecuting banks while at the same time serving on a competing bank’s board, something South Carolina didn’t question at the time.

We read of his mysterious death – still wondering why his car stopped on railroad tracks to get blown away by an oncoming train. It resulted in a lawsuit against the railroad by his son, J. Randolph “Buster” Murdaugh Jr., and the beginning of decades of the Murdaugh law firm suing railroads.

Within two weeks, Buster was the solicitor. He held the job for 46 years. DeWitt sketches Buster Murdaugh’s escapes from a number of accusations that he himself was breaking the law or acting unethically.

We see Buster using his position and the court system to try to punish those who accused him.

“Hampton County is not a wicked place,” DeWitt told me. “A lot of wicked things have gone on here.”

He sees it as a much kinder and gentler place than it was at its creation.

“We need to know about our past, learn from it and go forth and make a better tomorrow,” he said in his best editorial-writer’s voice.

A new countywide high school should help the county write a more inclusive history.

And so will dissecting the Murdaugh dynasty.

“The question is how can we learn from it,” DeWitt said. “How can we change a system that allows this to go on for so long?”

David Lauderdale may be reached at LauderdaleColumn@gmail.com .