The man accused of shooting Alex Murdaugh as he tried to cover up the shooting deaths of his wife and son claims the one-time legal scion told him he needed him to fatally shoot him “because they’re going to be able to prove that I’m responsible for Maggie and Paul.”
Curtis Eddie Smith, a 62-year-old distant cousin and former client of Murdaugh’s, made the bombshell claim on the new season of Netflix’s “Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal,” released Wednesday and admitted Murdaugh had asked him to shoot him.
“He called me about 10, 10:30 in the morning, asked what I was doing,” Smith recounted of that day of the shooting — which occurred just three months after Murdaugh killed his wife, Maggie, 52, and son, Paul, 22.
“I said, ‘Nothing, just I worked late, you know.’”
Smith said Murdaugh then asked to meet him at a nearby funeral home, and when he arrived, “he pulled the sun visor around to where it was in his window… and he rolls his window up so I’m looking at him through a hole.”
“I said, ‘What are you doing?’” Smith remembers asking his distant cousin. “He goes, ‘Well I don’t need to be seen in town,’ and he said, ‘Well, I’m being watched.’”
Smith said he asked the lawyer who he thought was watching him, to which he reportedly claimed SLED — referring to the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division.
“I said, ‘Why are they watching you for?’ and he said, ‘Well, you know, about what happened.’”
“I said, ‘You mean out at Moselle?’” the sprawling estate where Maggie and Paul were killed. “He said, ‘Yeah.’
“I said, “Man, what happened?’ he said, ‘Things just got all f–ed up,’ just like that,” Smith said.
At that point, Smith said, Murdaugh asked him if he loves him, to which the accused hitman replied, “Yeah like a brother, you know that. I’d do most anything for you.”’
That is when, Smith said, Murdaugh asked him to “shoot me and kill me.”
The alleged accomplice said he immediately refused, saying: “That ain’t happening. Not today, not tomorrow. It ain’t happening.”
“And he just [says]… ‘Well I guess I got to try to do it myself,” and took off.
Smith said he was concerned about Murdaugh following the conversation, and immediately chased after him.
“Good Lord, Maggie and Paul was already dead, Mr. Randolph died three or four days later,” he remembered thinking, referring to Alex’s father. “The family don’t need a whole lot more going on.
“And when I pulled up there, and I rolled the window down, he’s coming up to my window with a gun,” Smith said.
He claimed he wanted to “scare some sense into him” and fired his own weapon into the air on the rural road in Hampton County.
Upon hearing the gunshot, Smith claims, Murdaugh “just hit the asphalt just like that.
“That’s where that spot on the back of his head [comes’] from, from the rocks sticking up on the side of the road, not from a bullet bounced off his head from less than six [feet] behind him.”
He said he “knew I hadn’t shot him.”
“I knew there wasn’t no blood on him, there wasn’t no blood on me, so I went home.”
Murdaugh then called 911 to say he was shot in a drive-by shooting while changing a tire, and was brought to a local hospital for what police called a “superficial gunshot wound to the head.”
As questions mounted about the shooting, Murdaugh admitted to the assisted suicide plot, claiming Smith was responsible for the gunshot wound that grazed his head.
He allegedly hatched the plan to have himself killed so his surviving son, Buster, could collect on a $10 million insurance policy.
Murdaugh is now serving a life sentence for the deaths of Paul and Maggie.
He has also reached a plea deal with prosecutors in his federal financial crimes case — and as part of the agreement must fork up millions of dollars to former clients.
Murdaugh is accused of stealing millions from clients. He faces money laundering, wire fraud, bank fraud and other charges.
The plea agreement would require Murdaugh to pay back $9 million and fully cooperate with investigators by providing “full, complete and truthful information about all criminal activities,” the documents state.
Smith was arrested and charged with assisted suicide, assault and battery of a high aggravated nature, pointing and presenting a firearm, insurance fraud, and conspiracy to commit insurance fraud.
In April, he was granted bond following claims of declining health, and is now speaking out about the alleged shooting on Sept. 4, 2021.
Smith has repeatedly claimed he is innocent, previously telling the Post he was set up by the renowned lawyer.