WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT
Alex Murdaugh allegedly raped a former sex worker who told FitsNews in an exclusive interview, "I thought I was going to die" – but jurors never heard the sordid allegations.
Murdaugh was sentenced to life in prison last week for fatally shooting his son, Paul, 22, and his wife, Maggie, 52, near the dog kennels on their sprawling hunting estate in Islandton, South Carolina, June 7, 2021.
But it turns out the 54-year-old disbarred attorney allegedly committed shocking acts of violence before the double murder.
Former stripper Lindsey Edwards, 28, exclusively told FitsNews in August that she was trafficked to Murdaugh, who savagely beat and raped her about eight years ago.
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"I was violently choked with both hands, like being pinned down to the bed in a way by my throat, and it was to the point where I could not breathe," she told Will Folks, the founder of FitsNews.
"I was blacking out, I was seeing spots, I was seeing stars. I was beating and scratching on his wrist as much as possible to get him to stop, because I thought at that moment I was going to die."
The nightmare unfolded after Edwards, to earn extra money, began working for a woman in 2014 that she thought was going to book her as a dancer at private parties.
On her first appointment in December 2014, the woman told Edwards she would have to service the clients, and when she tried to back out, a bodyguard allegedly "loaded up a gun and was ready to put it to her head."
They allegedly threatened to kill her and her daughter if she refused to have sex with men for money. Edwards earned between $160 to $180 an hour.
She was booked for a guys' weekend at a beach house at the Isle of Palms in late 2014 or early 2015.
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"We were taking shots, doing cocaine, smoking weed, hanging out by the fire and just talking and almost getting to know them," she said of the gathering where she first met Murdaugh, who introduced himself by his real name and told her he was a personal injury attorney in Hampton.
There were several other sex workers at the party, but Murdaugh took a liking to her. "He was very nice and everything like that and very gentlemanly like at first," she said. "When it came time to actually have to service him, my expectations were still pretty high."
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But Murdaugh transformed in the blink of an eye. "You could just see his whole entire personality just change," she recalled. "His eyes were like black in a way."
After he allegedly beat, choked and "violently penetrated her" she said she "got up and ran out as fast as possible even completely naked."
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A few weeks later, she was escorted to a job in north Charleston at a hotel, and to her horror, she was told when she arrived that Murdaugh was the client.
Again, he allegedly raped and choked her, leaving hand prints on her neck. "It was just violent penetration and ripping hair out of my head," she said. "I had bald spots in the back of my head right at the crown."
Just days later, her madam tried to arrange another tryst with Murdaugh, but Edwards was so terrified that when she arrived at the hotel, she fled in an Uber.
Hours later, her captors found her hiding out at her home and forcibly delivered her to the twisted client.
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"He was even more pissed then," she told FitsNews. "I got hair pulling and choking. If he wasn't choking me, I had a wash rag shoved in my mouth, and I was being slapped across my face violently for a good, like, 20 to 30 minutes."
The mother of four asked her madam why she had allowed Murdaugh to treat her so brutally, and she allegedly replied that the attorney was in her personal phone and got special privileges.
Murdaugh was the only client that her madam allowed to physically abuse her, she said.
Murdaugh wasn't the only powerful man with whom Edwards said she was forced to have sex.
"We ended up servicing mayors, judges, solicitors, district attorneys from other states, cops," she said. "Servicing people at the PGA Masters, very big name people, a lot of big name CEOs and companies and stuff like that. It's a lot more than just Alex."
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Murdaugh is still facing 99 state charges stemming from his alleged theft of nearly $9 million from his law firm, clients and the IRS – but he hasn't been charged for the attack on Edwards.
A spokesman for the South Carolina Attorney General's Office declined to comment on the allegations. "There are no charges against him at this time related to sex trafficking or sexual assault," said Robert Kittle. "We cannot confirm and certainly cannot comment on anything that may or may not be under investigation."
FitsNews scrutinized Edwards's claims and were able to corroborate many details of the first encounter with Murdaugh – including confirming the identity of other guests, who were there.
Folks told Fox News Digital that lead prosecutor Creighton Waters had some explosive personal dirt on Murdaugh that he chose not to use at trial – but he wasn't sure if Edwards' allegations were in that arsenal.
"We're told it was a game day decision," Folks said. "In the South, you just don’t go there unless it’s central to perhaps motive if they had evidence to indicate it was linked to that pressure he was facing."
Maggie's sister, Marian Proctor, revealed that Murdaugh had an affair about 15 years prior to the murders, but Judge Clifton Newman ruled the indiscretion wasn't relevant to the murder case and barred that information from coming in during her testimony.
"The violence in him has always been there," Edwards said months before Murdaugh's conviction. "I hope honestly he rots in jail. Death penalty would be nice, but I feel like that's an easy way out. He can spend the rest of his life in jail and die in jail."
Murdaugh's attorneys, Jim Griffin and Dick Harpootlian, didn't immediately return a request for comment.
Haley Chi-Sing contributed to this report.
