First, the focus was on not only the two victims but also the living: two of the prominent family’s surviving members, Alex Murdaugh, the husband and father of the victims, and his only remaining son, Buster Murdaugh, 25. Yet as the tale of his wife’s and son’s deaths unfurled in the days, weeks, and months to come, prosecutors would claim that lawyer Alex Murdaugh wasn’t the victim of these horrendous crimes, he was allegedly the perpetrator, at the center of a web of murder, insurance fraud, drug addiction, conspiracy, and coverups—culminating in not only the alleged killing of his own wife and son but also in his allegedly commissioning (or tricking) his distant cousin, client, and alleged drug dealer, Curtis Edward “Fast Eddie” Smith, to kill him.