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

The stranger-than-fiction story of the now-notorious low country 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 jailed in the state capital. He stands accused of a staggering amount of wrongdoing—ninety-nine 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 claim, Alex was secretly a fraud, a thief, a drug dealer and an all-around phony. On the night of June 7, 2021, they claim, he also became a killer.

The many alleged crimes of Alex Murdaugh, revealed 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, Murdaugh is further shown to be a man without bottom. Every new disclosure eclipses and redefines what’s already known, making this a gothic crime story for the ages.

Yet even more remarkable is the fact that none of this bad behavior is unprecedented. In Swamp Kings, Jason Ryan reveals it is only the tip of the iceberg, and that when it comes to this family, 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, trafficking, calamitous late-night boat crashes, and even murder.

Spanning a century of misdeeds and set amongst the swamps, pines, and poverty, Swamp Kings weaves together the jaw-dropping narratives of generations of Murdaughs, culminating in the trial that transfixed the nation and shining a bright light on the swamp kings of Hampton County—and their numerous victims—at last.