Day after Paul Murdaugh boat crash, officers interviewed survivor Miley Altman on video

This story was first published Aug. 24, 2021

A day after the 2019 boat crash near Parris Island that killed Mallory Beach, two S.C. Department of Natural Resource officers interviewed Miley Altman, one of the five surviving boaters.

Altman, then 20, had been with her boyfriend, Connor Cook; Paul Murdaugh and his girlfriend, Morgan Doughty; and Anthony Cook and his girlfriend, Beach, the evening of Feb. 23, 2019. They left in Murdaugh’s father’s 17-foot boat from his family home on Chechessee Creek, known as “The Island.”

Prosecutors alleged that after a night of drinking, Paul Murdaugh drove the Sea Hunt Triton 172 center console boat into a piling of the R.C. Berkeley Bridge at 2:20 a.m.

In a nearly hour-long interview, in which Altman waived her right to an attorney, officers Damian Yongue and Austin Pritcher asked Altman who was driving the boat just before it struck the bridge.

Altman said she was pretty sure it was Murdaugh but that she was looking forward, bracing herself and screaming that they were about to hit the bridge.

When Pritcher pressed Altman to identify the last person she saw driving, she responded, “I’m very sure it was Paul, but it could have been back and forth between them (Connor and Paul).”

“I wasn’t constantly looking back,” Altman said because she was comforting Doughty.

She said the boat hit the bridge seconds later.

That uncertainty is also in her written statement, but her drawing places Murdaugh as the driver.

Near the end of the interview Altman specifically detailed Murdaugh’s unrelenting demands to use her phone to make a call.

Altman told officers she balked at first because her phone had only 1% of a remaining charge.

As the interview was coming to a close, SCDNR officer Pritcher asked Altman whether she was faster writing or typing.

“Can you type?” Pritcher asked.

Altman, with her hands on her lap, shrugged her shoulders, looked at Yongue then back at Pritcher and sheepishly responded “u-huh,” subtly shaking her head yes.

“Better than you write?” Pritcher asks

“Um, I’m not sure, I guess.” Altman responded, still seemingly confused.

Pritcher told her he wanted everything that she’d just recounted written down.

“All of it?” she asks.

I don’t want you to leave anything out.” Pritcher responds.

For the remainder of the interview, about an hour, Altman was hunched over the table busily writing, turning page after page, sometimes asking questions.

In the video and in her written statement, Altman told SCDNR officers that she let Murdaugh use her phone.

Unlike Altman’s written statement, the video captures the confusion and further questions officers ask of Altman after she has told them that Murdaugh’s first call was to his grandfather, Randolph Murdaugh III.

Murdaugh was indicted on April 18, 2019 on three felony counts of boating under the influence. He pleaded not guilty and was out on bail.

He was never tried. On Jun 7, 2021, Murdaugh and his mother, Maggie Murdaugh, were found dead outside their Colleton County home in Islandton, S.C.

The South Carolina Attorney General’s Office dropped the charges Aug. 6, 2021.