Review of “Blood on Their Hands: Murder, Corruption, and the Fall of the Murdaugh Dynasty”

“Blood on Their Hands” is a memoir that journalist and podcaster Mandy Matney wrote after four years of reporting on Alex Murdaugh, his family, and their numerous related crimes. It details how she first became aware of the Murdaughs after Mallory Beach went missing as a result of the boat crash on Archers Creek, the mysterious death of Stephen Smith that many people felt was connected to the Murdaughs, the death of the Murdaughs’ housekeeper, and finally, the deaths of Paul and Maggie Murdaugh. With dogged reporting, Mandy Matney and a few other diligent South Carolina reporters would realize how everything led to the fact that Alex Murdaugh had been abusing narcotics and embezzling money from innocent people for years before his crimes caught up to him.

In the book, Matney shares how she was a journalist who had gotten her start right out of college as the editor of a small newspaper in a Missouri military town. This was a job with a big title and small salary to match, where she had to beg the corporate office for basic things she needed to do her job, such as a freelance budget for writers or a new camera. After a few years she moved on to a job as a digital editor of a newspaper in Illinois, with the goal of increasing the traffic and pageviews for the paper’s website. Facing many of the same frustrations she had been dealing with at her previous paper, Matney opted to look for a job in a warmer climate. The Island Packet in Hilton Head offered her a job as a digital projects producer.

When she first started her job at The Island Packet, she immediately saw a difference in their newsroom environment compared to places she’d worked in the past. She said there were “no burned-out reporters forced to work second jobs on the weekends. There were no disgruntled readers showing up at my desk to complain about typos. Instead, “there was a pervasive vibe of optimism and importance about the place.”

Matney had been at The Island Packet a few years when the boat crash on Archer’s Creek occurred, then working as the breaking news editor. It was reporter Liz Farrell who first alerted Mandy that she had an odd feeling about the story surrounding the crash involving six teens, one of whom remained missing. The boat crash had occurred in Beaufort County, near Parris Island while the passengers on the boat were all from Hampton County, which did not fall under the coverage area of The Island Packet. The reporters noticed there was no official press release available right away. They also couldn’t help but notice the online chatter about who was really driving the boat. This was the first time Matney and her co-workers heard the name Paul Murdaugh. She quickly became obsessed with learning as much as she could about the Murdaugh family, because the more she researched, the more she uncovered. But, as she writes, “The Island Packet had a strict rule that they would only print names attached to criminal stories when they were felony cases, unless the accused person was in a position of public trust.”

While reading her story, I developed a new respect for Mandy Matney. There were many roadblocks that she encountered along the way to uncovering all the pieces of this story, from sexist attitudes in the newsroom, power players affecting how her stories were covered or not covered, and having her stories taken away from her and given to male reporters at related, larger, corporate newspapers. Eventually she was wooed away from The Island Packet by FITSNews, a local independent new media outlet, where she continued her coverage of all things related to the Murdaughs. What she encountered along the way sounds like something straight out of a Hollywood film script, from anonymous sources contacting her, to online trolls sending her degrading messages, to being followed by law enforcement on dark country roads when she met with Stephen Smith’s sister, to Alex Murdaugh’s attorneys making fun of her in court. Her mental health took a toll while she was determined to see the story through.

She explains in the memoir that she first started the Murdaugh Murders Podcast because she had so much more information to share than she was allowed to in her daily news job with FITS News, and she didn’t know the ins and outs of how to produce a podcast well. Plus, she was doing it on a shoestring budget, with the help of her now-husband David. Reading this memoir, I believe people will understand exactly how hard she worked to get the podcast up and running, and she did it with a sense of urgency because the Murdaugh story was one that reporters from all over the country latched on to immediately. Quite frankly, she didn’t want to be scooped when she’d spent so many years cultivating her sources and doing her due diligence with local residents and law enforcement officials, and I believe readers will sympathize with that.

Eventually, Matney went out on her own to start her own podcast production company, figured out how to monetize her content, and reported on the Alex Murdaugh trial on her own terms. Along the way, she uncovered other crimes that needed to be covered in South Carolina and teamed up with an attorney to produce a separate podcast called “Cup of Justice.” This memoir provides a clear timeline of just how long it can take to get justice for victims, along with the resistance many journalists face when trying to uncover a story that involves as many power players as this one did.

Thanks to NetGalley and HarperCollins Publishers for the chance to read an advance copy of this book.

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