Buster Murdaugh, the son of Alex Murdaugh, listens to his father testify during his trial for murder at the Colleton County Courthouse in Walterboro, S.C., on Thursday, Feb. 23, 2023. The 54-year-old attorney is standing trial on two counts of murder in the shootings of his wife and son at their Colleton County, S.C., home and hunting lodge on June 7, 2021. (Joshua Boucher/The State via AP, Pool)
Buster Murdaugh, the son and namesake of convicted double murderer and fraudster Alex Murdaugh, has filed a lawsuit against Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery, among others, claiming the defendants defamed him in the documentaries “Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal,” “Murdaugh Murders: A Deadly Dynasty” and “Low Country: The Murdaugh Dynasty” by either “subtly” or more directly accusing him of murdering 19-year-old Stephen Smith in 2015.
The lawsuit, filed last Friday in the Court of Common Pleas in Hampton County, S.C., additionally named Gannett, the publisher of the Hampton County Guardian, that paper’s editor Michael Dewitt, Jr., and production companies behind the documentaries at issue.
Buster Murdaugh, who testified at his father’s trial about the “shock” upon learning that his mother, Margaret “Maggie” Murdaugh, 52, and his younger brother, Paul Murdaugh, 22, were shot to death in June 2021 at the family’s Moselle property, said in a statement after Alex Murdaugh’s conviction that he categorically denied involvement in Stephen Smith’s death.
“I have tried my best to ignore the vicious rumors about my involvement in Stephen Smith’s tragic death that continue to be published in the media as I grieve over the brutal murders of my mother and brother. I love them so much and miss them terribly,” he said in 2023, also forecasting a possible lawsuit. “I haven’t spoken up until now because I want to live in private while I cope with their deaths and my father’s incarceration.”
Buster added that the rumors were “baseless,” “false” and “defamatory,” as he offered condolences to Smith’s family, whose commission of an independent autopsy largely confirmed that the openly gay teenager and former classmate was killed by “a single blow to the forehead” traceable to a hit-and-run.
Murdaugh’s lawsuit recounted the autopsy findings and the existence of grand jury proceedings as follows:
On July 8, 2015, Stephen Smith, whose car had given out of gas, was walking along a rural road in Hampton County, South Carolina. It was late at night. As he was walking along the road he was allegedly struck by part of a vehicle and killed. News sources now report his death is being considered by a statewide grand jury, and the media has reported on individuals unrelated to Plaintiff allegedly being involved in his death. The Plaintiff, even though he has been falsely accused of harming Stephen Smith as described below, has not been notified by any law enforcement entities of any allegations against him related to Stephen Smith’s death.
Warner Bros. Discovery’s “Murdaugh Murders: Deadly Dynasty”
The lawsuit alleges that Buster Murdaugh was defamed in a 10-minute segment of the series which “alluded to [him] a number of times as the murderer of Stephen Smith.”
“The false statements have been published to hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of viewers who watched the show, including viewers in South Carolina, and the defamatory statements continue to be republished as of the filing of this action,” the suit claimed.
Warner Bros. Discovery’s “Low Country: The Murdaugh Dynasty”
The series streamed on Max, Murdaugh’s suit said, included “false statements that suggest” he and other individuals “murdered Stephen Smith by striking him with a baseball bat” in an anti-gay hate crime.
“A sequence in the show accuses the Plaintiff of killing Stephen Smith because of his sexual identity and further insinuates that Plaintiff killed Stephen Smith in relation to a romantic relationship between Plaintiff and Smith,” the lawsuit said. “These statements are untrue in their entirety.”
“These statements are defamatory in that they falsely accuse the Plaintiff of committing murder,” the complaint continued.
Netflix’s “Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal”
The Netflix series, the complaint said, clearly chose to show a red-haired man with a baseball bat to further paint Buster “as the murderer of Stephen Smith.”
“The series publishes statements such as ‘everyone keeps coming up to me and saying it was the Murdaugh boys’ and ‘listening to these statements it is pretty clear; Stephen’s death is intertwined with the Murdaughs,” the suit claimed.
Murdaugh, again, disputed that he had “a romantic relationship” with Smith and denied that he and “maybe two other individuals” were responsible for murder.
The plaintiff attacked the productions as “reckless,” “unfair and biased” accounts that defamed him, caused lasting damage to his reputation, and caused “mental anguish.”
Eric Bland, an attorney for Stephen Smith’s family, blasted the “stunning” lawsuit on X in a lengthy commentary predicting the suit will ultimately “backfire in a big way,” since the entities Buster Murdaugh sued are powerful, “will fight tooth and nail” against him, and could unearth details that might be used in “future documentaries.”
Bland said the named defendants might view depositions as something of a gold mine.
“Buster will have to answer questions in a multi-day deposition from every single defendant for instance about when he met Stephen Smith, has he ever ridden in a car with Stephen Smith, has he ever had lunch or dinner dinner with Stephen Smith, has Stephen Smith ever been to his house, does he have any knowledge about Stephen Smith’s death, etc.,” Bland said. “These lawyers are going to ask him 100s of questions of him along this nature. There will be discovery into the Murdaugh family. All of Buster’s friends will be deposed.”
“Don’t forget Buster’s name was included multiple times in the investigative file surrounding Stephen’s death when it was publicly released by the South Carolina Highway patrol in 2021,” the lawyer continued.
In summarizing his take, Bland said the suit “is not a smart move.”
Law&Crime attempted to reach Netflix, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Gannett for comment.
Read the lawsuit here.
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