On Thursday, jurors deliberating on Alex Murdaugh’s fate delivered a swift and certain verdict – but they did not hear more damning evidence against the shamed legal scion and his proclivity for violence.
Murdaugh allegedly raped and beat a prostitute who claimed he hired her from a sex trafficking ring catering to’mayors, judges, solicitors, district attorneys, and police officers’ – evidence that jurors never heard.
Lindsey Edwards, 28, made the explosive claims in an August video interview with a South Carolina news site.
The mother-of-four, who claims she was sex trafficked while working as a pole dancer, recalled several incidents in late 2014 or early 2015 when she was allegedly forced to have sex with Murdaugh and was subjected to a series of savage attacks by the attorney, who was sentenced to life in prison on Friday.
Prosecutors have told DailyMail.com that they will press charges against Murdaugh on over 100 other counts, including financial crimes, an assisted suicide life insurance plot, and obstruction of justice. He is also being investigated for drug trafficking.
The South Carolina Attorney General’s Office, however, declined to comment on the status of a reported investigation into Edwards’ claims of a four-time savage beating and rape by the disgraced legal scion, as well as his links to organised crime.
Fits News published an interview with Edwards on August 2 and uploaded it to YouTube, in which she tearfully recounted the horrific story.
Her testimony was never shown to the jury in Murdaugh’s case because the judge ruled last month that bringing evidence of his infidelity would be too confusing.
Murdaugh’s wife’s sister-in-law Marion Proctor told the judge she thought he cheated on her sister 15 years ago, and that her sister brought it up around the time of the murders. ‘She didn’t believe anyone was still going on,’ Proctor explained.
The judge allowed her to testify but barred the jury from hearing about her alleged infidelity.
Murdaugh now faces at least five separate state investigations, including a financial crimes probe for defrauding clients and associates, oxycodone and meth trafficking charges, and obstruction of justice in the investigation of his son Paul’s boat crash, which killed 19-year-old Mallory Beach.
‘We do intend to pursue the other charges pending against Alex Murdaugh. However, there are no charges against him at this time related to sex trafficking or sexual assault. We cannot confirm, and certainly cannot comment on, anything that may or may not be under investigation,’ South Carolina Attorney General’s Office spokesman Robert Kittle told DailyMail.com.
‘Other than the four charges he was just convicted of, there are 99 State Grand Jury financial charges pending against him, and three local charges related to the roadside shooting incident: conspiracy, false claim for payment, and filing a false police report.’
In an interview last August with Fits News founder Will Folk, Edwards said her ‘madam’ brought her and several other girls to a private party at a beach house on the Isle of Palms in late 2014 or early 2015, where she met Murdaugh.
‘It was apparently a guys weekend or something like that. There was a bunch of guys there drinking, doing drugs. They had a fire going on the deck and eating food and just hanging out,’ she said.
‘I think for the first hour we were there we were taking shots, doing cocaine, smoking weed, hanging out by the fire and just talking and getting to know them.
‘That’s where I met Alex Murdaugh.
‘There were at least enough girls for everybody that was there,’ she told Folk. ‘They had their pick of the crowd between the girls. He attached himself to me. He was very nice, very gentlemanlike at first,’ she said.
He told her he was a personal injury lawyer out of Hampton, South Carolina.
‘When it came time to actually have to service him, my expectations were still pretty high. I was like okay, shouldn’t be that bad, I’ve already done this a good hundreds of dozens of times at this point. He seemed like a really nice person.
But Edwards said that was when the nightmare began.
‘You could just see his whole personality change,’ she said. ‘You could see it in his eyes. Maybe it was the cocaine and everything. His pupils got so much bigger to the point his eyes were almost solid black.
‘I was violently choked with both hands, being pinned down to the bed by my throat,’ she said. ‘It was at the point where I couldn’t breathe.
‘I was blacking out, I was seeing spots, seeing stars. I was beating and scratching on his wrist as much as possible to get him to stop, because I thought at that moment I was going to die.
‘It was also while being violently penetrated. As soon as he was done, I got up and ran out as fast as possible, even completely naked.’
Without Edwards’ knowledge, she was set up with another job with Murdaugh at a hotel in North Charleston a few weeks later.
She said this time he ripped chunks of hair out of my head.
‘I had bald spots in the back of my head. The hair there is still taking a while to grow out.’
Just a few days later, she claimed the madam set her up with Murdaugh again.
‘I still had hand prints around my neck that I was covering up with makeup,’ she said.
Edwards said that she feared for her life, and managed to escape by smuggling her phone with her and calling a cab.
But five hours later her captors found her at home, dragged her out and she was ‘forced to go back and service Murdaugh’ she said.
‘He was even more pissed then,’ she told Fits News. ‘I got hair pulling and choking. If he wasn’t choking me I had a wash rag shoved in my mouth and I was being slapped across my face violently for a good 20-30 minutes.’
Edwards said when she asked her pimp why she let Murdaugh beat her, the woman told her he was a ‘personal friend’.
