Norton
Review by Walter Cummins
Of course, I had heard of Alex Murdaugh. It would have been difficult not to if you followed the news after 2019. How could the combination of social prominence, wealth, legal power, and the accusations of embezzlement and murder not appeal to our taste for sensationalism? My own knowledge at that time never went beyond the headline stage, unable to avoid the flaunting of the latest revelation and accusation. Still, I didn’t find the lure of yet another rich and famous crime story compelling.
James Lasdun changed my mind. I chose to read The Family Man because I know of him as a significant poet, essayist, and novelist. I assumed a new book by him would have something to offer. He got into the Murdaugh story in an early stage when assigned to write an essay for The New Yorker. Another followed as the case moved on. But for Lasdun the writing became much more than a journalistic assignment. He was clearly perplexed and even obsessed by the need to understand how a man like Murdaugh could exist and commit the crimes he admitted to and those he denied, particularly the cold-blooded murder of his wife and a son. For Lasdun, his deep research became a delving into the human capability for evil.
One of his reasons, perhaps a most basic one, related to his experience as an author of murder mysteries and his need to understand the nature of his invented criminals, especially what led them to commit murder. At the heart of his own character creation was the necessity of a plausible motive. That question was what troubled him most deeply about Murdaugh. How could he come to grasp how his fictional creations did what they did when the complexity of an actual human being was escaping his comprehension? Why would this man kill his wife and child? Even the guilty verdict at the end of the trial left Lasdun wondering, unsure.
With his authorial experience of creating the character of a murderer he could not fail to question the relationship of an imagined fiction to the facts of an actual event. He asks himself “I had to wonder if I was simply exhibiting the same ‘blind spot’ as the heroine of my stalled crime novel, her difficulty in acknowledging the reality of evil, even when it was staring her in the face.” The nature of evil, for him, becomes a baffling conundrum underlying all the evidence in the Murdaugh story.
Throughout The Family Man Lasdun offers detailed testimonies, transcripts of police questioning, the content of Murdaugh’s phone calls to family members, and countless interviews with police, townspeople, and Murdaugh friends and associates. The book seems a complete compilation of every piece of legal and personal evidence .
Lasdun clearly couldn’t let go of the case as he analyzed his own findings, considering a range of possibilities. Murdaugh because—he claimed—of the costs a long-term opioid addiction cheated a number of clients, some of whom were close friends, of their case settlements, even of millions. He lied about the amounts, falsified minimal payments, or just stole entire payments. When the evidence of his crime became impossible to deny, he was convicted and sentenced to a term of 27 years in state prison.
Despite the extent of these betrayals, many who knew him closely and others in his community couldn’t believe he could have committed the murder. They considered him a good old boy and a true family man. In the courtroom during the sentencing after the jury verdict of guilty, many people spoke of their affection for the man. A number of church going believers, even some he had swindled, forgave him and prayed for his soul. Murdaugh spoke of his love for them.
What was the source of his evil act? That became Lasdun’s quest. Beyond the many interviews, including some with people who had known Murdaugh for years, even from high school, he consulted a number of psychiatric sources, especially those that attempted to define a sociopath. When the experts disagreed, he had to decide which analysis was more convincing to him. Was it possible that the man had cold-bloodedly murdered his wife and son and yet “that his grief was genuine”?
What did anyone really know about Alex? There was the exuberant outward man who “inspired universal affection and unquestioning trust.” Yet underneath, there was the textbook sociopath who was capable of fraud, theft, and lies. Was there also a “monster” so evil he could kill those closest to him? Lasdun, after all his personal debate, finally came to a conclusion, accepting what appears to have actually happened.
Note: After the publication of The Family Man the question of Murdaugh’s guilt returned when the South Carolina Supreme Court threw out the trial’s verdict because of jury tampering by a court clerk. Murdaugh remains in prison, serving the fraud conviction as he and so many others await a retrial.
