After brutal assault, her cousin’s murder, Mary Elizabeth Murdaugh sees light in the darkness
Her family name is known everywhere.
But few knew her personal story.
Earlier this month, Mary Elizabeth Murdaugh stood before a video camera on a red carpet in Paris and talked about how she found strength in confronting crises most will never face, adversities she faced alone in addition to the media feeding frenzy of the Murdaugh murder saga. Since she spoke, thousands have heard her story.
“I watched the biggest heartbreak of my life turned into entertainment for millions,” said Murdaugh, 23, the niece of Alex Murdaugh, who is now serving double life sentences for the murders of his wife, Maggie, and son Paul, Mary Elizabeth’s cousin. She is now wrapping up a master’s degree at the American University in Paris.
“I will never forget how it felt seeing a photograph of my cousin’s blurred dead body on TikTok, and finding out that his brain was found at his ankles from a video that had 3 million ‘Likes’ — my loving cousin, only one year older than myself. I cried for days over that detail,” she said.
In an 18-minute TEDx video posted on the internet, she spoke of a painful journey through storms of darkness — first, a years-long depression, then a brutal sexual assault by a stranger when she was a University of South Carolina student and then the murders. But the journey finally led into the light, where she is now.
“My path began in rural South Carolina in a small town called Hampton. My hometown has 2,000 people – more deer than people, as they like to say. I loved the people around me, but I couldn’t understand them. I couldn’t understand their satisfaction with the simple life,” she said.
Growing up, she tried to escape through books and dance and her imagination, but felt lost.
“I knew there was a big world out there. I just couldn’t touch it. This internal drama really took a toll on my identity. It created a feeling of loneliness I became very used to. If I couldn’t live out life to its fullest, I didn’t want to live at all. The mind of a young girl is a strange place to be.
“My babysitter would turn on the music video of Britney Spears’ ‘Lucky,’ which is the story of a young girl who is misunderstood by the world, and she sings on her hotel balcony … ’if there’s nothing missing in my life, then why do these tears come at night?’ And I thought, ‘That is so me’.”
Over time, she found techniques of yoga and meditation gave her tools not just to cope with her feelings of isolation and sadness, but to synchronize herself with goodness and love in the world, she said.
“My depression was the crack that let the light in,” she said. “All of a sudden, I was grateful, I felt chosen even – that I could experience anything this beautifully, this deeply. ... I had found strength in my biggest weakness. And I kept going from here. I pursued my relationship with life like it was my greatest love.”
After high school, she was at peace, a student at the University of South Carolina, living in an apartment in Columbia’s Five Points.
“On a regular day in 2021, my life would change forever. I was asleep in my apartment until I woke in the middle of the night to the sound of my door opening. … And when I looked up, there was a man standing above me,” she said. “I have never seen eyes like the ones that he looked at me.”
She screamed. He told her he would kill her if she screamed again, then beat her and assaulted her sexually.
“I was trapped with him for about 20 minutes,” she said. It came to her that the same tools that she used to fight depression could be used to survive and escape her peril.
“I had to exert physical strength, but more than that, I had to show emotional strength. Everything I had learned was essential to this moment.”
Those methods, which she discusses in her talk, were first acceptance: “No one heard me scream. No one was going to save me. I remember thinking if I was going to get out, I would have to think of a way.”
Next, she had to be present in the moment. “I was in pain from being beaten. But it was essential that I didn’t lose consciousness. When he choked me and I knew I was about to pass out. I took a deep breath. And at the last possible moment, I let my body go.
“He thought that I had passed out, which gave me a few seconds to create space in between us so that we can talk.”
She then used a technique she calls mindful observation. “I noticed that when I spoke, he responded differently to tones of my voice. I was able to figure out a bit about the man in front of me.”
A plan to escape entered her mind. “I positioned myself perfectly in the room. I took off my clothes. And when his guard was down, I took off running. He followed behind me, but he slipped and fell … giving me the few extra seconds that I needed to escape.”
Columbia police quickly arrested the man. Surveillance videos and DNA evidence left no doubt.
“As I healed in the weeks after, a transformation continued to happen within me — the violence that was brought to me introduced a counter energy — a slower, sweeter, more gentle approach to life compared to the fire that I had under me before. I could have died but I lived and that was something that I could be grateful for.
“I felt inspired to share my spiritual and emotional journey now that I knew that these tools could truly save lives like I had mine.”
A month later, on June 7, 2021, her world exploded again.
“My dad (Randy Murdaugh IV) received a phone call from his brother (Alex), saying that his wife and son had been badly shot. My dad was out the door in no time. And my mother, sister and myself stood speechless with no information. I called my other uncle (John Marvin Murdaugh), and I asked him what we could do. And he said nothing. They’re dead. There’s nothing to be done.
“The media would call it execution-style murders. The media would change everything. Two days later, my grandfather passed away. He passed in his bed surrounded by his children and grandchildren. And we held his hand expressing our love and gratitude towards him, sending him gently into death.”
Randolph Murdaugh III, a former 14th Circuit solicitor, died at 81.
“Within a few days, my family experienced both the most violent and intrusive of deaths and the most peaceful and loving of deaths. This is life. It’s love.
“The story of the murders is a long and complicated one. We found out that my uncle is an addict and had been stealing money from the law firm founded by my family generations ago.
“It was a total shock and the ultimate betrayal to the integrity of our family. Since then, he has been found guilty for the murders of his wife and son,” she said. “The conflict is deep and complex, and it has caused so much pain for so many people.”
The story of the murders went viral, becoming “a headline in the global media. ... It was adopted by the true crime community where it was turned into documentaries, podcasts, countless news articles and segments. ... Me and my family had our hearts broken in front of everyone.”
Some people supported the Murdaugh family, she said. “Others chose to write movies about it.”
In January 2023, she was in Paris, enrolled at the American University of Paris. That was the same month the double-murder trial of Alex Murdaugh, her uncle, began in Walterboro.
“My first week of school was also the first week of the murder trial. So on my walk home from class, I put up a live stream of the trial on YouTube. And I watched my friends and family as I walked through my new city,” she said.
In July 2023, she flew back to South Carolina for the trial of her assailant.
“I met my attacker again in court. I looked him in his eyes and I fought him with the same strength that I did the first time. In the end, justice was served, as I believe it always is in one way or another.”
Robert Drayton was convicted of first-degree burglary, kidnapping and criminal sexual conduct. Judge Heath Taylor sentenced Drayton to life in prison on the burglary charge and 30 years each on the other charges. He is not eligible for parole.
After the trial, she returned to Paris “and started the rest of my life. I couldn’t imagine the relief and freedom that I feel with that chapter of my life closed. Now a few days will go by and I won’t even think of the trauma. I love my life and parents even with the challenges. I’m proud to have separated myself from what I know and created something of my own.”
She came to realize that she had to tell the truth about her experiences.
“I can’t honor the truth if I don’t shed light on it. I can’t honor my journey if I’m scared of what people are going to think.
“I want to live bold. I want to be brave and share myself and feel every single thing. It’s my honor to.”
Randy Murdaugh, a lawyer in Hampton and Mary Elizabeth’s father, has posted his daughter’s video on his Facebook page.
“I’m proud of her, and I’m very supportive of her,” Randy Murdaugh said in an interview with The State. ”Her philosophy, her approach is not an approach to tragedy, it’s an approach to life. It’s not playing the victim, saying ‘woe is me’ – you know what? You can learn from your experiences, whether they are good experiences or bad experiences, that’s what we should do.”
Randy adds Mary Elizabeth has put herself forward to help others. “I’m very, very proud of her. ‘Proud’ doesn’t adequately describe how I feel.”
In her video, Mary Elizabeth said she knows now that “part of living is feeling hard things. When I was a child, I would have never thought that I would lose a loved one to gun violence. Nor would I think that I could move to Paris and share my emotional journey with all of you.”
And she knows that she is not the only one to whom bad things have happened: Children die in Gaza, thousands of people are homeless in Paris, thousands of acts of violence are committed against women, she said.
“So what do we do?” she asked. “Do we numb ourselves because it’s uncomfortable? It’s hard to look tragedy in the eye and connect with it. It takes bravery; but as a collective, this is what we have to do. When we name it, we feel it. We give life to it. This is how we heal ourselves and we show the world around us.
“To limit your capacity for pain is to limit your capacity for love. I continue my journey, and I will forever, and I’m not scared.
“I know that wherever the darkness is, the light will follow.”
In an interview Monday, Mary Elizabeth said the response since she posted the video earlier this month has been overwhelmingly positive. People have gotten in touch to thank her for sharing, as well as sometimes sharing something about themselves with her.
“The reaction has been absolutely beautiful. Whenever you open your heart to people and show some authenticity and truth, it allows people to do the same to you.,” she said.
