Mallory Beach was a 19-year-old from South Carolina, who was killed in 2019.
Netflix has added a brand new documentary to its library, looking into cases associated with the Murdaugh family in Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal.
The three-part series looks at the killings of Paul Murdaugh, 22, and his mother Margaret “Maggie” Murdaugh, 52, who were found dead in their family’s hunting lodge in 2021.
Alex Murdaugh is currently in jail and on trial for allegedly killing his wife and son. He strongly denies the charges.
As well as the deaths of Paul and Margaret, the documentary also explores a boating accident that Paul was involved in in 2019, which led to the death of 19-year-old Mallory Beach.
So, who exactly is Mallory? What happened to her? And was her body ever found?
Here’s everything you need to know.
Who was Mallory Beach?
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Mallory Beach was a 19-year-old from South Carolina who was killed in a fatal boat crash in February 2019.
The boat was allegedly crashed by her friend Paul Murdaugh, according to CBS News, a 19-year-old who came from a family of prominent lawyers in South Carolina who “dominated the legal landscape in the southern part of the state for 100 years“.
What happened to Mallory Beach?
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On 23rd February 2019, Mallory and her boyfriend Anthony Cook planned to spend the night at a house party but first met at ‘Murdaugh Island’ – the river property owned by Paul Murdaugh’s family – with the couple, Paul, his girlfriend Morgan Doughty, Anthony’s cousin Connor Cook and his girlfriend Miley Altman deciding to take the Murdaugh boat there.
According to CBS, all of the teenagers were drinking alcohol and went to the party at 7pm. Altman said that when they then left the party at midnight, “Paul insisted on driving to a bar in downtown Beaufort”.
Leaving the bar at 1am, the group boarded the boat – however Murdaugh was “acting rash” and kept leaving the wheel to fight with his girlfriend, according to Doughty’s testimony. The boat then crashed at 2:20am into the Archers Creek Bridge and Beach fell into the water.
Was Mallory Beach’s body ever found?
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Mallory Beach’s body was found over a week after the crash.
The authorities spent eight days searching for Beach’s body and on 3rd March, volunteers found her five miles from the crash scene. Murdaugh was later indicted and charged with three felony counts of boating under the influence and causing the death of Mallory Beach as well as seriously injuring two other passengers.
Murdaugh pleaded not guilty and was awaiting his trial on bond when he was killed on 7th June 2021, along with his mother Maggie.
According to The Post and Courier, after Murdaugh’s death, questions were raised over alleged “law enforcement missteps” in the early stages of the investigation into Beach’s death.
“Attorneys for one of the passengers asked in a recent court filing to question a group of responding officers about a possible effort to shift blame away from Murdaugh, a member of a powerful Lowcountry family,” the publication wrote in August 2021. “A state grand jury was also empaneled to examine how officers investigated the crash.”
While a conversation between a Department of Natural Resources officer and Anthony Cook showed that Cook immediately told them that Murdaugh was driving the boat, the report on the crash did not contain that piece of information and instead, according to The Post and Courier, said that Cook “wasn’t sure who was driving”.
A Beaufort deputy Jack Keener, who spoke to Murdaugh, allegedly “opted not to collect as evidence a phone Murdaugh was carrying” despite being heard saying in a recording that Murdaugh had dropped his phone in the grass, The Post and Courier also reported.
In March 2019, Beach’s family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the Murdaugh’s, listing Paul’s mother Maggie, who allegedly knew he was drunk when he went boating, and his older brother Buster, whose ID he reportedly used to buy alcohol, according to WTOC.
A judge approved a settlement between the families in January this year, with the Beach family lawyer Mark Tinsely predicting a pay out of $700,000 (£582,000) for the victims.
Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal is available to stream on Netflix now. Check out more of our Documentaries coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to see what’s on tonight.
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