Part II of Four Parts
In Walterboro, SC, kindness hangs in the air like moss in the oak trees, providing a gentle whisper of invitation.
This is what people call the Low Country, since it sets near or below sea level on the coast. It produces significant salt marsh land and other coastal waterways, making it a source of biodiversity for South Carolina.
The marsh surrounding the town once offered protection during the wars of 1776 and the Civil War because it is hard to trudge through the ooey, tar-like bottom. Boats have solved that problem. Marshes also produce a sulfuric smell that, while peculiar, comes to smell like sweet home to those who grow up near the marshes which celebrate golden light when the sun lights the weeds, glowingly.
The outer edges of the town are scruffy. Some buildings are abandoned, setting amidst parking lots where pinches of grass nose through cracks and, though it is creeping into spring, the decorative trees are shabby, in need of a sprucing.
Walterboro, a town brimming with smiles and Southern hospitality, is mostly a stop-by for gas by travelers heading South, toward Savannah, on I-95. Since the murders that stunned this town and captivated the world, endless hours of stories have been written, a constant flow of television crews and, at least, two multi-part documentary series have mesmerized countless viewers.
During one documentary, a man says quietly, a tinge of sadness clinging to his tongue, “Nobody has any reason to move here and those who live here never have any reason to move away.” Paraphrased slightly, that isn’t as sad as it sounds. How many of us would love to keep our hometowns the same, particularly as long as there’s a Waffle House, Piggly Wiggly, churches, and decent education? Getting to a certain amount of neighborly growth and stopping there, isn’t near as bad as some might it think.
South Carolina was once a textile giant, twisting cotton grown in its vast fields into scrumptious product. Good cotton. Soft, thick, luxurious cotton. Years ago, I spoke at a textile executives’ retreat in Myrtle Beach. They gave me an enormous bath towel. It remains sturdy and useable, 15 years later. Textiles made celebrities of families like Milliken and Cannon but those jobs have gone South to countries that can produce at half the price.
That leaves a sweet city like Walterboro, just hanging on. It was perhaps even lonely until January, 2023, when a circus rolled into town, bringing trucks, tents, food wagons, side shows, cameras, satellite dishes, and a freak or two. Despite the sound, it was not the circus we used to know where a dime would spin us through a tunnel of mirrors, where everything is distorted. In a way, there was more truth to that in the courtroom than one would imagine.
For six weeks, carpetbaggers, town’s folks and deeply-born Southerners ambled into town hoping to personally see a trial, with international intrigue, that assembled in the beautiful old, white courthouse.
Tink and I were in London when kindly Judge Clifton Newman dropped the gavel on the murder trial of former attorney, Alex Murdaugh, charged in the heinous shooting deaths of his 22-year-old-son, Paul, and Murdaugh’s wife, Maggie.
“It was,” acknowledges an evidence clerk, “the worst thing I’ve ever seen in 25 years of doing this. For days, I was affected. For nights, I didn’t sleep.”
When the trial began, we discovered that the London Daily Mail had sent a writer to Walterboro. The reporter tried to procure an interview with Buster, the remaining son, who waved him away. Seconds later, Buster hollered back, “You better not say I stand in support of my father!”
Yet, on the day I walked into Colleton County Courthouse, faithful Buster was three rows behind his father, as he would be daily, without fail, even testifying positively for his father.
This case, I discovered, has more twists and turns than the meanest mountain road I ever saw.
[Ronda Rich, a best-selling author, dabbled as a crime reporter during her newspaper days. Visit www.rondarich.com to sign up for her free weekly newsletter.]
