Beaufort County boat crash victim told police Murdaugh was the driver, new documents show
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2019 Boat Crash Coverage
The crash of a Murdaugh family boat in 2019 killed 19-year-old Mallory Beach and started a chain of events that would remain in the news two years later. Here are the stories from that crash.
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This story was originally published on Nov. 15, 2019.
Less than an hour after 19-year-old Mallory Beach died in a boat crash near Parris Island in February, her boyfriend unequivocally told authorities that Paul Murdaugh — the son of a powerful South Carolina family — was driving the boat at the time of the crash and that he was too drunk to be driving, according to recently released police reports.
According to written statements from four responding officers, none of the boaters told deputies that anyone besides Murdaugh was driving the boat that night.
Yet, a Beaufort County Sheriff’s office deputy wrote in a report that it was “unclear” whether Connor Cook or Paul Murdaugh was the driver responsible for the accident on Feb. 24 in Archer’s Creek. This information was passed onto South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, the lead investigating agency in the highly public case.
Weeks after the fatal crash, the sheriff’s office recused itself from the investigation due to its “long-standing relationship” with the Murdaugh family. However, recently released documents obtained by the Island Packet through a Freedom of Information Act request show that Beaufort County deputies did preliminary police work that narrowed the pool of suspects to two people and could have changed the course of the investigation.
Authorities on scene failed to administer or offer Murdaugh a sobriety test, a decision roundly criticized by the public because multiple agencies had noted that all five boaters were younger than 21 and “highly intoxicated.” Initially, when the Island Packet asked Capt. Robert McCullough of DNR why sobriety tests weren’t done at the scene, he said it was because the driver couldn’t be determined and testing multiple people would likely result in a case being thrown out.
It took authorities seven weeks after the crash to charge Murdaugh, 20, in Beach’s death. The Hampton man was indicted by a Beaufort County grand jury on one count of boating under the influence causing death and two counts of boating under the influence causing great bodily injury on April 18 — what would have been Beach’s 20th birthday.
Special treatment?
In May, Murdaugh pleaded not guilty to the felony charges and was granted a $50,000 recognizance bond, but did not have to spend time in jail. Even though Murdaugh faces BUI charges, in addition to a previous alcohol-related charge from SCDNR, the state did not restrict him from drinking alcohol or driving a boat. He recently had the only condition of his bond modified so he could go anywhere in the state of South Carolina, as opposed to the five-county limit set at his first bond hearing.
In September, a boating accident on Lake Murray, northwest of Columbia, resulted in the death of one person and injuries to two others. The driver, 53-year-old Tracy Gordon, was arrested and charged the same day of the crash, Sept. 21, with three felony BUI charges, according to court documents.
Gordon failed a field sobriety test and refused a breathalyzer, according to an incident report posted by Fox 57. SCDNR officials obtained a warrant for a sample of Gordon’s blood. He spent six days in jail before he was granted a $100,000 bond and ordered to wear an alcohol-monitoring bracelet, WIS reported.
McCullough told the Island Packet Thursday that investigators took a sample of Murdaugh’s blood while he was at Beaufort Memorial Hospital Feb. 24. But Murdaugh was treated much differently from Gordon.
Asked about the difference between the two cases, McCullough said in the Lake Murray crash, “the officer showed up and then arrested him.”
“Down in Beaufort, the officers showed up at the hospital, and (both suspects) already had attorneys,” McCullough said.
Those attorneys were Paul Murdaugh’s father, Richard Alexander Murdaugh, and grandfather, Randolph Murdaugh III, who served as a third-generation solicitor in the 14th Judicial Circuit from 1986 to 2006 and continues to work for the solicitor’s office as a contract employee. The Murdaughs told investigators the boaters wouldn’t be taking sobriety tests.
The sheriff’s office was one of three government bodies that asked to be recused from the investigation and case due to their close ties with the Murdaugh family.
A review by the Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette of police reports filed by the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office in the case reveals many more details of the investigation in its earliest phase.
What Beach’s boyfriend told police
The sheriff’s office was the first agency to arrive on scene after receiving the 911 call at 2:26 a.m. Because of confusion from the initial 911 call that sent several first responders to the wrong location, EMS arrived 28 minutes later after several, and ambulances appeared 40 minutes after the call. While other agencies worked in the search for Beach, Beaufort County deputies questioned three of the boaters while waiting for EMS, according to 14 pages of recently released police reports. Deputies described a tragic, chaotic scene when they arrived on the RC Berkeley Bridge around 2:40 a.m.
Anthony Cook was pacing, crying, and yelling “Mallory” when a deputy found him walking on the Malecon Drive Bridge, the report said. He was “in shock and worried about finding his girlfriend,” but he took a minute to tell police what happened that night after the deputy walked with him to “calm him down enough to get some information from him in regards to the incident.”
He told the deputy that he and his friends were on the river “all day, drinking” before docking that evening in downtown Beaufort.
Cook said he stayed with Beach while the other four friends left the boat to drink more downtown.
When they got back to the boat, Anthony Cook “begged Paul Murdaugh, who was driving the boat at the time of the incident, to please let him drive,” the deputy wrote in the report.
Murdaugh “refused to let him drive,” Anthony Cook told officers.
Once the 17-foot center console boat, owned by Murdaugh’s father, entered Archer’s Creek, Cook “sat on the bottom of the boat and had Mallory sit in his lap to hold on because Paul was going too fast.”
They weren’t sitting on the floor long before the boat hit the piling and Cook was thrown into the dark water, along with the others. Everyone but Mallory surfaced.
“Mallory!” he yelled over and over as he swam around the area through the dense fog, searching for his girlfriend.
After 20 minutes of searching for Beach, Cook’s cousin, Connor Cook, called 911. Officers from the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources — the lead investigating agency in the crash — didn’t arrive for more than an hour.
That left several Beaufort County deputies and Port Royal police officers at the scene without clear direction. Deputies began questioning the boaters as they waited for EMS and ambulances to arrive.
During his interview, the officer led Anthony Cook to his patrol vehicle so he could calm down and warm up. While in the patrol vehicle, Cook became “irate” when Murdaugh started walking in his direction.
Again, he told police “Paul was very intoxicated and should not have been driving the boat.”
What others said
Deputies have no record of attempting to question Murdaugh, who was not seriously injured in the crash, according to the documents. They also didn’t question a 20-year-old woman, whose hand was bleeding profusely and needed an ambulance immediately. A deputy noted he didn’t question her because “no statements were made by (woman’s name) or others that indicated she was driving the boat. No notes were made about why they didn’t interview Murdaugh.
There are also no statements indicating Connor Cook, who suffered a jaw injury in the crash, was driving the boat, other than the report written by a Beaufort County deputy who did not further explain why Cook was a suspect.
Deputies did not make any notes about why they didn’t interview Murdaugh, who was clearly a suspect.
Asked why a deputy wrote that Connor Cook was a potential driver in the case, spokesperson Maj. Bob Bromage declined to comment on the case because it has not gone to trial. Asked whether other documents could explain why Cook was a suspect, Bromage declined again to comment.
As one of the officers was “trying to obtain” the boaters’ information, a deputy saw Murdaugh on the phone talking to someone, according to the police report.
“Paul appeared to be highly intoxicated and was only wearing boxers,” the report said.
Murdaugh said “something to the effect of ‘we were runnin’ hard and hit the Lemon Island Callawassie Bridge. Mallory is gone and we can’t find her.’” He then “started to sob.”
While Murdaugh was on the phone, Connor Cook and another boater told a deputy they had gone to the day dock in downtown Beaufort that evening and they were on their way home when they hit the piling and Mallory disappeared.
“When asked who was driving, they stated they did not know,” according to the report.
Later, Connor Cook, Paul Murdaugh, and a female boater were transported to the hospital by ambulance.
Another deputy wrote that “Murdaugh became very uncooperative and almost aggressive” toward EMS personnel after he got into the ambulance.
EMS then requested that the deputy ride with Murdaugh to Beaufort Memorial Hospital “to ensure the safety of the patients and themselves,” according to the report.
After a week-long, community-wide search, Beach’s body was recovered by a boater, nearly 5 miles from where the accident happened. A preliminary autopsy lists her cause of death as drowning and secondary blunt force trauma as a result of the crash.
More than 500 people attended a March 7 funeral for Beach, who is remembered for always being kind, a Christian and a lover of animals.
DNA evidence
The sheriff’s office reports also provide details about the evidence collected in the criminal investigation.
About 4:30 p.m. Feb. 24, more than 14 hours after the crash, a deputy was asked to collect DNA evidence from the boat for SCDNR, according to a Sheriff’s Office report. During those 14 hours, the boat was moved to Parris Island Boat Landing, about a mile from the scene, and sat in “open air” while there were periods of rain in Beaufort County, according to the report.
The deputy was tasked with collecting evidence to help determine who was driving the boat at the time it crashed. Though the deputy did not find any fingerprints for processing, he collected 11 swabs for DNA where blood had spattered on the boat, which could help determine the position of each of the boaters when it crashed.
In previous reporting, the Island Packet asked Bromage why the sheriff’s office did not recuse itself when asked by SCDNR to collect evidence in the case. Bromage said expediency took priority over the potential perception of a conflict of interest later.
No trial date has been set, according to Robert Kittle, spokesperson for the South Carolina Attorney General’s office, who is prosecuting the case because of 14th Judicial Circuit Solicitor Duffie Stone’s office recused itself.
NOTE: The Island Packet identified only the boaters who had either spoken with reporters or were named as suspects in the investigation.
This story was originally published November 15, 2019 at 5:45 PM with the headline "Beaufort County boat crash victim told police Murdaugh was the driver, new documents show."
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