Alex Murdaugh is a thug

thug:
A thug is typically referred to a male or female who commits crimes for personal gain through stealing, selling drugs, but especially violent crimes such as robbery and assault.

I avoided this salacious story for as long as I could. I didn’t click through the headlines to learn more or watch the series which, judging from how quickly it made it to the screen, must have been made in about 20 minutes.

The whole thing just felt icky.

Once the sentencing was announced earlier this month, I did a 10 minute deep dive and read some coverage in the NYT. It was as disturbing and disgusting as I might have imagined, had I allowed my attention to be grabbed by this salacious story. Alex Murdaugh was exactly what you might picture upon hearing the term “white entitlement” with the added bonus of belonging to a bonafide “Southern legal dynasty style” and being a ginger.

The articles I read about Alex Murdaugh painted a damning picture of man who seemed to have never heard the word “no” in his life, at least not other than as in “don’t you know who I am?” The crimes he most recently committed, and was justly convicted of, were only his most heinous. There are numerous other mysterious situations in the community where the Murdaugh Dynasty rule reside – the death of a young man who was friends with one of the young Murdaugh brothers, the death of a long time housekeeper to the family and the theft of the insurance settlement related to her death, threats made to witnesses of the boat crash which resulted in the death of a young woman…

It’s a lot and, while I understand the commercial value of the sordid story, I’m glad I didn’t follow the trial any more closely than I had. My instincts were correct on this one – I most certainly didn’t want or need to know anything more about Alex Murdaugh. And, honestly, I can’t imagine why anyone would feel differently. He’s a thug in the truest sense of the word.