When Alex Murdaugh murdered his wife and son, Maggie and Paul, in 2021, a lengthy period of extraordinary media interest from the local to the international level created a news story like no other. News outlets dubbed the murder trial in early 2023 the “trial of the century.”
The court case presented an unusual challenge for the City of Walterboro: it would now be the site of unprecedented news coverage, all centered around the historic Colleton County Courthouse.
“We knew that we couldn’t do anything about the reason people would be focusing on Walterboro, but we could do something about the impression we made on our visitors,” said Mayor Bill Young. “We realized that our visitors, court personnel, the media and others working the trial would carry the message as to the kind of town Walterboro is. We set about preparing for the media onslaught and controlling those things that we could control. We did our best to meet the media’s needs and accommodate everyone. We were not defensive about the trial and provided numerous interviews during its six-week duration.”
At the Municipal Association’s Annual Meeting, Walterboro City Manager Jeff Molinari presented a session on how the city handled the challenge. Many of the city’s other ongoing projects needed to continue at the same time — road and streetscaping improvements, sewer rehabilitation, and even Walterboro’s recent acceptance into the Main Street South Carolina downtown revitalization program.
And with or without an incredibly unusual event going on, the city had to maintain, as always, its services of police, fire, water, sewer, parks, municipal court, billing, permitting and business licensing, he said.
“This may be the most important aspect of managing the trial,” he said.
Molinari described the many partnerships the city used for trial coordination: the SC Law Enforcement Division, which had a command center in a city parking lot, Colleton County, Beaufort County and their sheriffs, and the SC Attorney General’s Office, which was handling the case.
Parking was a major concern for the city, given the many media vehicles that would be present. City property became designated media lots, where the city charged a fee to provide services. Palmetto Rural Telephone Cooperative and Dominion Energy set up temporary installations to provide for the internet, broadcast and electrical needs of the media. Molinari described the involvement of the city’s police providing security, the water department serving the portable restroom facilities, public works providing regular trash collection, the parks department managing landscaping and Scott Grooms, who served as a tourism director at the time and used his broadcast background to coordinate effectively with the media.
“Almost every department was involved in managing the trial,” Molinari said. “Obviously, our best resource is our city employees and they went above and beyond to make sure that the trial went off without a hitch.”
The city’s coordination with food trucks to handle the crowds emerged as “one of the more controversial aspects of the city’s reaction,” he said, because local restaurants were concerned about losing business. The city pursued it for logistical reasons, given the number of people and because the judge allowed only 75 minutes for lunch for everyone.
“The food trucks did a very good business, they were open for breakfast and lunch. But what we found was that the brick-and-mortar restaurants did extremely well at night,” Molinari said.
A primary takeaway, Molinari said, “is you have to embrace the situation. Prepare, coordinate and communicate. Expect the unexpected.”
This could be anything from the public works department filling puddles that formed after a heavy rain struck the downtown, or it could be a long-vacant car dealership building that Assistant City Manager Ryan McLeod identified as an appearance concern before the trial. The city pursued his recommendation of filling its windows with a banner displaying Walterboro’s “Front Porch of the Lowcountry” branding, which became a backdrop for some of the media coverage.
One memorable incident during the trial came when media commentators, seeing Mayor Young seated in the courtroom gallery, mistook him for legal thriller novelist John Grisham. People insisted that he must have been the writer even as Young clarified his identity.
“He had a really good sense of humor about it,” Molinari said.
The city used its recently-constructed Walterboro Wildlife Center, an event space that showcases the environmental significance of the Walterboro Wildlife Sanctuary, as a working space for reporters. Some of the events that were to take place there shifted schedules, but there was one event with no available workaround — a wedding scheduled for what became the same time as the trial.
“The bride was not thrilled,” he said. “I will say the media was great, they helped us move everything out of the event space. The wedding went off without a hitch — in fact, one of the media outlets even did an interview with the bride, so that all worked out.”
“This trial brought the world to Walterboro. We were on national and worldwide news several times a day,” said Mayor Young. “I believe the preparations made by the city, county and court personnel working in a coordinated effort with the single-minded desire to make everyone feel welcome and comfortable — despite these tragic times — allowed us to make a positive impression on those present and on the many TV, print, podcast and internet outlets that covered the trial.”