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Paul Murdaugh was pulled over by police for hosting a booze-fuelled boat party just days before he was brutally murdered by his father – and at a time when he was awaiting trial over a 2019 deadly boat wreck. In the new series of Netflix’s “Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal”, released on Wednesday, housekeeper and family friend Blanca Turrubiate-Simpson revealed that the 22-year-old had a fresh brush with the law in the run-up to the 7 June 2021 murders. His father Alex Murdaugh was said to be taking care of the matter. The incident took place around a week before Memorial Day weekend, when Ms Turrubiate-Simpson said Maggie told her that “Paul got in trouble again”. “He was on the boat with friends and they were drinking,” she said. “But they called Alex and he said he was going to take care of it.” Colleton County Clerk of Court Becky Hill also confirmed that the DNR had stopped the 22-year-old with a boat full of people of board. The group was already drinking alcohol from a cooler “full of booze” and were “ready to go out on the water” in the boat. “The DNR held him back and took all of the booze off the boat,” said Ms Hill. The court clerk said that the incident is shocking given that – just two years earlier – Paul allegedly caused a drunken boat wreck that killed his close friend Mallory Beach, 19. “You would think someone who would be appearing in court to decide if they are going to jail for killing somebody from a boat crash just two years before would not be still found on a boat partying,” she said. It was one night in February 2019 and Paul was allegedly drunk driving the Murdaugh family’s boat and crashed it, throwing his friends overboard. The others survived but Beach as missing. Her body washed ashore a week later. Paul was charged with multiple felonies over the boat wreck and was facing 25 years in prison at the time of his murder. At Murdaugh’s trial, prosecutors revealed that the disgraced attorney was also being sued by Beach’s family. On the day of the murders, Murdaugh was working on the case. A lawsuit hearing had been scheduled for 10 June 2021 – a hearing which prosecutors said would have exposed Mr Murdaugh’s ruinous finances. Murdaugh was also investigated by a grand jury investigation into allegations he tried to influence the other teens who survived the boat crash to get Paul off the hook. Prosecutors said that the boat wreck – and the escalating legal troubles it had brought – was the catalyst for murdering Maggie and Paul. Now, details of May 2021 boating incident – and Murdaugh’s apparent plans to fix it – appear to indicate another “pressure point” for Murdaugh in the run-up to the 7 June 2021 killings. “It makes you wonder if it was another pressure point for Alex knowing that he could not control anything that Paul did,” said Ms Hill in the show. “It just added to the pressures that were adding up in Alex’s life.” Ms Turrubiate-Simpson said that the incident also cast doubts on Murdaugh’s claims – and that of his son Buster when he took the witness stand in his defence – that things were “normal” among the family prior to the murders. Jurors had been shown footage of the family and some close friends singing “Happy Birthday” to Murdaugh during a Memorial Day weekend celebration. Buster had described the day as a “normal Memorial Day weekend”. Ms Turrubiate-Simpson said that description was “not true”. “That’s not true... There was a lot going on at the time,” she said. At the trial, jurors heard how a “perfect storm” led Murdaugh to kill his closest family members, arguing that he wanted to distract from what later transpired to be a decade-long multi-million-dollar fraud scheme – at a time when it was on the brink of being exposed. On the day of the murders, jurors heard testimony of how he was confronted by Jeanne Seckinger, the CFO at his law firm PMPED, about missing payments. Murdaugh had stolen the money from the firm and his clients – and didn’t have the money to pay back. The boat crash lawsuit was also going to expose his financial crimes. And his father Randolph – the family patriarch – was dying. Randolph died on 10 June 2021 – three days after Maggie and Paul. Ms Turrubiate-Simpson said that she thinks the family knew that Murdaugh would “lose it” once his father died. “I think [Maggie] knew at that point that if something happens to Randolph, Alex is going to lose it because he was really close to his dad – like Paul,” he said. “It might not have been spoken but I think the family knew that once Mr Randolph was no longer alive the family dynamic was going to change. There was not going to be that family unity any more.” The disgraced legal scion was convicted in March of the brutal murders after a gruelling six-week trial. Now, he is fighting to be granted a new trial, accusing court clerk Ms Hill of tampering with the jury. Even if he is granted a new trial, Murdaugh will likely spend his life behind bars as he is facing a slew of state and federal charges over a slew of financial crimes. On Monday, he reached a plea deal with federal prosecutors – agreeing to plead guilty to 22 federal charges and admitting that he stole millions of dollars from law firm clients for his own personal benefit. He is headed to court on Thursday to officially enter his plea – marking the first time that he has ever pleaded guilty to committing a crime. Read More Murdaugh Netflix show airs new bombshell claims as Alex strikes plea deal for financial crimes – live Alex Murdaugh’s bombshell confession before infamous botched hitman plot revealed Alex Murdaugh pleads guilty to committing crime for first time

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The last time Erna heard from her brother was a week ago, in the frantic rush to escape Nagorno-Karabakh as it dissolved around them. In just a few days over 100,000 people - nearly the entire local ethnic Armenian population - fled the separatist enclave, fearing persecution as Azerbaijani forces closed in. Mobile phone networks were down, the only road out was at a standstill and people found themselves separated by the shelling. And so in that chaos people went missing and families lost each other. The United Nations said children were arriving in neighbouring Armenia unaccompanied. There were reports of people being detained by the Azerbaijani authorities and the Armenian healthy ministry said some people, particularly the elderly, died while on the 40-hour journey due to malnutrition and a lack of medicine . “We still don’t know if my brother made it to Armenia, if he is alive,” the school administrator tells the Independent in tears from Goris, a border town which has quickly morphed into a massive refugee camp. Behind her is a flurry of activity: shellshocked families pick through piles of donated clothes, food and supplies as they try to work out how to piece together their lives. “We last heard from him as he was going to get fuel,” Erna’s son David, 18 continues as his mother appears too overwhelmed to continue the story. The family fear he may be among the 170 killed in a massive explosion last week at one of the few petrol stations still operating in the enclave. On Monday desperate refugees had flocked there to secure fuel to get out when the blast occurred. No one knows what exactly happened but it added another layer to the tragedy. They are not alone, says Lusine Barkhudaryan 30, who until last week was deputy minister of infrastructure for Nagorno Karabakh’s self-declared government. Now the former lawyer is camping at a hotel in Goris, having like tens of thousands of others, left everything behind. “One of my colleague’s husband is missing, and two neighbours are also unaccounted for they were separated during the rush to get out,” she tells The Independent, dissolving into tears. “I know of another woman who is looking for her husband, brother and father. They may have died in the petrol station but they don’t know. They are still trying to find them.” With so many unaccounted for in the confusion, The International Committee of the Red Cross together with the Armenian Red Cross have just set up a hotline which people can call to register their missing. “So far we are getting 100 calls a day,” Zara Amatuni, an ICRC spokesperson tells the Independent. “It is difficult to provide credible information for the time being because the situation is evolving so rapidly,” Finding the missing is just one of the nightmares facing Karabakh Armenian families and Armenia itself as it reels from the biggest movement of people in the South Caucasus since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Tens of thousands of now-homeless people are on the move camping in hotels, schools, private homes, in their cars and even the streets after they left their homes and homeland that no longer exists. The Armenian government said they have so far managed to temporarily house some 32,000 people in state facilities but the question of what to do in the long term remains unanswered. No one was prepared because the situation unfurled with such alarming speed after Azerbaijan launched a lightning military campaign against the breakaway forces last week. Baku wanted to take back the majority ethnic Armenian enclave that is internationally recognised as being part of Azerbaijani but has enjoyed de facto statehood for three decades. In the 10 months leading up to the 24-hour blitz, the Azerbaijanis had imposed a blockade strangling food, fuel, gas and water supplies to the area. Weakened by the siege, outnumbered and outgunned by a military bolstered by Turkey, the Armenian separatist forces capitulated almost immediately. Their political leaders said they would dissolve their government by the end of the year, triggering the exodus. Reports of the arrest of senior Karabakh officials - including former ministers and security officials - added to the panic. On Sunday Azerbaijan said it issued an arrest warrant for the head of the enclave Arayik Harutyunyan. Now 80 percent of the 120,000 residents have packed up their lives in a few minutes and crossed into Armenia. There, Armenian officials told The Independent they were struggling to accommodate them. Yerevan has accused Azerbaijan of “ethnic cleansing”. Baku has vehemently denied the accusations saying the families chose to leave of their own accord. “In the 2020 conflict, we had a similar issue but people knew they would return after a ceasefire. That is not the case now,“ Gnel Sanosyan, Armenia’s minister of infrastructure tells The Independent with exhaustion. He is standing by a packed registration centre in Goris, where hundreds of people are being registered by Armenian officials manning dozens of computers. “We are trying to pool all the state institutions together to handle the situation. The Armenian government is trying its best but the international community needs to step up and help”. Pressure is mounting on Armenia. Armenian citizens have taken to the streets demanding Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan resign as they blame him for failing to defend Nagorno Karabakh. The government was already struggling financially and now needs to provide housing, medical care and jobs for tens of thousands of new people that are increasingly scattered across the country. In Vayk, a tiny mountain town dealing with the overflow from Goris, local administrative leader Hayk Avagyan said they quickly passed the capacity of the local hotels and public shelters. “We started sending to private houses,” he says with desperation. “There are many things to think about in the future like jobs and education.” In Goris, families are struggling to work out their future. Luisine Barkhudaryan, the former Karabakh official, says legally Karabakh Armenians do not have the right to social benefits or welfare Armenians do despite being Armenian passport holders. Finding work will be tricky, she adds. “And I didn’t bring anything with me not even a glass from my kitchen to drink water with,” she said. Erna’s family, meanwhile, are still trying to locate family members before they can even get make solid plans for the future. “We are going to the capital Yerevan to hopefully rent a flat,” “What can we do? What should the world do? It’s too late.” Read More Nagorno-Karabakh: Tearful 16-year-old describes ‘bombing’ while she was in school A People lost: The end of Nagorno Karabakh’s fight for independence Azerbaijan issues arrest warrant for former separatist Nagorno-Karabakh leader Almost all of Nagorno-Karabakh's people have left, Armenia's government says Azerbaijan issues arrest warrant for former separatist Nagorno-Karabakh leader Armenia grapples with multiple challenges after the fall of Nagorno-Karabakh Almost all of Nagorno-Karabakh's people have left, Armenia's government says

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