“The accused man sat in the same courtroom where he and his father and grandfather and great-grandfather had accused so many others, sending some to their death for crimes less heinous than the charges he faced.”

The first sentence of the book introduces Alex’s family’s legal legacy and hints at the sheer scale of Alex’s crimes. By beginning her narrative with the trial, Bauerlein covers Alex in a cloud of suspicion before launching into the events that led to his many crimes. Throughout the text, Bauerlein mostly follows a linear storyline, though she does employ strategic shifts in timeline and perspective to emphasize particularly important facets of the case.

“There, among the cypress trees and loblolly pines rising out of the ashes, the Murdaughs carved an isolated empire. For decades, the family reigned as the region’s chief prosecutors—solicitors, they were called—as well as the Lowcountry’s most feared civil litigators, amassing power and wealth through a system of control that served as Alex’s true inheritance.”

Using descriptive language that mimics the structure of fiction, Bauerlein illustrates the isolation of Hampton County and the surrounding district that the Murdaughs exploited throughout their term as solicitors. Royalty is a central motif that Bauerlein frequently uses to indicate the scale of the power that the Murdaughs wielded over the citizens of Hampton, and this habit is evident here in her use of words such as “empire” and “reigned.” Bauerlein also stresses that Alex inherited this power rather than earning it, a fact that contributed to his wildly overblown sense of entitlement.