Swamp Kings: The Story of the Murdaugh Family of South Carolina and a Century of Backwoods Power

by Jason Ryan

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

The story of Alex Murdaugh and the entire Murdaugh clan is a wild one, and this comprehensive look at the sheer scope of their power, corruption and crime is unmatched, thanks in part to author and journalist Jason Ryan. With incredible access and an talent for sharp prose, this is a read with a multitude of hooks.

The stranger-than-fiction story of the now-notorious Lowcountry clan, in all its Southern Gothic intensity—by an author with unparalleled access to and knowledge of the players, the history, and the place.

The most famous man in South Carolina lives in prison. He stands convicted of a staggering amount of wrongdoing—more than 100 crimes and counting. Once a high-flying, smooth-talking, pedigreed Southern lawyer, Alex Murdaugh is now disbarred and disgraced. For more than a decade, prosecutors asserted that Alex was secretly a fraud, a thief, a drug trafficker, and an all-around phony. On the night of June 7, 2021, they claimed, he also became a killer, shooting dead his wife and son in a desperate bid to escape accountability.

The many crimes of Alex Murdaugh, exposed piecemeal over the last two years, have appalled the general public. Yet his implosion—the spectacular manner in which he has turned his vaunted family name to mud—has also proved mesmerizing. With every revelation, Alex Murdaugh has been shown to be a man without bottom, though he insists he never harmed his family.

Remarkably, all of his misdeeds have precedent. In Swamp Kings, Jason Ryan reveals Alex’s evil actions are only the tip of the iceberg. When it comes to the Murdaugh family of Hampton County, history has a way of repeating itself. For every alleged, headline-grabbing crime associated with Alex Murdaugh, mirror-image incidents have played out within his family’s past, including parallel instances of fraud, theft, illicit trafficking of babies and booze, calamitous boat crashes, and even alleged murder. There were some crimes committed by Alex’s kin that even he would not dare mimic.

Covering a century of depravity in an impoverished and isolated stretch of the Deep South, Swamp Kings weaves together the jaw-dropping narratives of generations of Murdaughs before culminating in the telling of a murder trial for the ages. Page after page the family’s legacy is laid bare as a spotlight is finally trained on the Murdaugh men who have long lorded over the South Carolina Lowcountry.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781639365678
Publisher:	Pegasus Books
Publication date:	04/02/2024
Pages:	464
Sales rank:	41,806
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 8.60(h) x 1.70(d)

About the Author

Jason Ryan lives in Charleston, South Carolina. His previous nonfiction books are Jackpot: High Times, High Seas, and the Sting that Launched the War on Drugs; Hell-Bent: One Man's Crusade to Crush the Hawaiian Mob; and Race to Hawaii: The 1927 Dole Air Derby and the Thrilling First Flights that Opened the Pacific.

Editorial Reviews

Part In Cold Blood, part Prince of Tides, part Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, here is a deep family tale, draped in literal and figurative Spanish moss, that’s as dark and tangled as any Southern gothic novel. And yet sadly, it’s all true. Jason Ryan has brought tenacious and enterprising new reporting to a spectacularly sordid story that flashed through the national zeitgeist and then largely disappeared. As the pages keep effortlessly turning, the reader is made to see what the Greeks understood so well: Tragic events often have numerous and profound antecedents.

Hampton Sides

"Meticulously documented and lucidly spun. Part New Yorker feature, part Jimmy Buffet song . . . The result is adventuresome, lavish, informative fun."

G.Q.

"Sputtering engines, empty fuel tanks, failed radios, and never-ending fog. Jason Ryan thrillingly recounts each pitfall as he details American airmen’s ultimate triumph over the world’s mightiest ocean.

author of The Aviators and 

Jason Ryan has crafted the end-all-be-all narrative of the Murdaugh murders. Ryan's dogged reporting and mastery of the intimate details of the crimes, the characters, and the history of this rural backwater shines through on every murky page. In his hands, this is a far larger story than just Alex Murdaugh. It is instead a generational tale of power, greed, corruption, and ultimately murder. This will not only be the definitive account of these crimes, but it is an absolutely amazing read, one of the best books I have read in ages. I literally could not put it down.

James M. Scott

Praise for Jason Ryan

“Ryan’s thrilling book is an absolute joy to read, capturing the excitement, wonder and tragedy of this pioneering age of aviation. This is one of those rare books, like Laura Hillenbrand’s “Seabiscuit” and Daniel James Brown’s “The Boys in the Boat.

The Charleston Post and Courier 

Convicted killer Alex Murdaugh left a string of bodies in his wake after years of lies and deceit. I thought I knew the whole story, but Jason Ryan’s new book, Swamp Kings, shocked me. Ryan’s deep dive into the Murdaugh family’s dark history adds even more details to this spell-binding story of a fallen family.

Kate Winkler Dawson

Combining meticulous historical research with riveting storytelling, Jason Ryan has crafted a rich and driving narrative on the Murdaugh family dynasty. Swamp Kings is both fascinating and unforgettable.

Gilbert King

Ryan builds suspense skillfully and makes heroes out of the men and one woman who vied in the derby.

Booklist (starred review)

Part In Cold Blood, part Prince of Tides, part Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, here is a deep family tale, draped in literal and figurative Spanish moss, that’s as dark and tangled as any Southern gothic novel. And yet sadly, it’s all true. Jason Ryan has brought tenacious and enterprising new reporting to a spectacularly sordid story that flashed through the national zeitgeist and then largely disappeared. As the pages keep effortlessly turning, the reader is made to see what the Greeks understood so well: Tragic events often have numerous and profound antecedents.

New York Times bestselling author of Hellhoun Hampton Sides

Ryan builds suspense skillfully and makes heroes out of the men and one woman who vied in the derby.

Booklist (Starred Review)

2024-01-18
The tale of a Lowcountry crime dynasty operating with impunity under cover of the law.

In 2023, high-profile lawyer Alex Murdaugh was charged with 99 crimes, including fraud, grand larceny, drug dealing, and the murders of his wife and son. As Charleston-based journalist Ryan, author of Jackpot and Race to Hawaii, shows, these crimes were a chain. Murdaugh became addicted to opioids, stole to fund his habit, and killed to hide his stealing. In doing so, writes the author in this sometimes slow-moving but grimly fascinating story, Murdaugh summed up a long familial legacy, with ancestors who made fortunes and reputations as kingpin lawyers in the swamp country near the Georgia line. They were effectively a law unto themselves, allied with secessionists, segregationists, moonshiners, and corrupt officials who lorded over their less fortunate neighbors, especially those of color. Occasionally, a Murdaugh would spend political capital on a progressive cause. In 1935, Randolph Murdaugh advocated for women to serve on juries because “their presence would have a good influence,” even as he insisted that “the testimony of a single White witness…was preferable to the accounts of six Black men.” Some of that early Murdaugh power was eventually diminished by federal inquiries and prosecutions, but by the time Alex came around, he was untouchable—almost, with the judge noting that Murdaugh, having sentenced plenty of people to death “probably for lesser conduct,” was lucky not to be headed to the electric chair. Ryan’s prose can wax purplish—“True dominion of this isolated swath of the South once belonged to someone as territorial and unyielding as the cottonmouth, as opportunistic and vicious as the alligator”—but his story unfolds with the care of a well-plotted procedural.

A searing, disheartening true-crime study, indicting a legacy of crime stretching out over centuries.

Kirkus Reviews