COLUMBIA, S.C. — Convicted double murderer Alex Murdaugh is now in the custody of the state prisons system to begin spending the rest of his life behind bars.
Murdaugh arrived Friday afternoon at Kirkland Correctional Institution in the state capital of Columbia after being taken on the roughly 90 minute trip from Walterboro.
In a new booking photo, Murdaugh has a shaved head. The prisons system says it's standard for new male inmates to get some type of haircut.
Hours earlier Judge Clifton Newman sentenced him to consecutive life sentences for killing his wife and son. On Thursday, a jury took just three hours to render a guilty verdict in the case following a six week trial. One of those jurors told ABC News that the decision was not immediately unanimous but that Murdaugh's lies and a video taken just before the murders helped convince them.
Murdaugh, 54, killed his wife Maggie and adult son Paul on June 7, 2021 at the family's large estate in Colleton County.
A spokesperson for the SC Department of Corrections told News19 that all male inmates are first taken to Kirkland. It's a maximum security prison but it has many other purposes that serve the state prison system.
Any inmate who arrives there will have an evaluation on a variety of aspects, including medical and mental health tests, education assessments, and other background appraisals.
There is an inmate classification system that uses several metrics to determine where the inmate will spend the rest of their sentence and which custody level they need. The corrections department also takes into account what facilities may be best equipped to deal with the inmates, including providing educational opportunities and addiction treatment services.
The evaluation is expected to take about 45 days.
Once that's over, he'll be taken to another maximum security prison. However, any inmate who goes there could have the opportunity to be transferred to a lower custody level if they have good behavior and meet other qualifications.