About the motive: first, you need to remember that Alex Murdaugh has been abusing pain killers for a long time. Been through rehab twice. He is not thinking or feeling normally. And thousands of dollars have been wasted on this addiction.

Two, you need to see the testimony of Mark Tinsley, injury lawyer for the family of Mallory Beach, the student who drowned when a drunk Paul Murdaugh slammed a motorboat into a bridge in the middle of the night. To put it briefly, apparently Alex Murdaugh thought that if he made it seem like some third party (presumably the Beach family) was persecuting himself, then when it came to trial, the community would know about the persecution, and the jury would give the Beach family a small amount in damages.

I think that the peculiar story about Alex being shot at on a country road was meant to be part of that scenario. But the story just couldn't hold up.

The murders were in June, 2021. The Beach case looked to be going to trial maybe 3 months after that, and Tinsley was prepared to go after Murdaugh's personal assets, not just insurance money. Murdaugh seemed to be getting desperate.

Only a madman would take this thinking to the point of a double murder, but given the illegal drugs, the dishonesty, the entitlement, the habitual using of guns, and who-knows-what-else, Murdaugh may have been madman enough to do it.