Former Murdaugh family housekeeper Blanca Turrubiate-Simpson is recounting the subtle but startling red flags that ultimately convinced her Alex Murdaugh killed his wife, Maggie, and their son, Paul. In her new memoir, Within the House of Murdaugh: Amid a Unique Friendship – Blanca and Maggie, Turrubiate-Simpson shares how years of trust gave way to a series of observations that, piece by piece, reshaped her understanding of the June 2021 murders.
At first, she didn’t believe it was possible. “There was no universe in which Alex could have committed these crimes,” she writes of her mindset in the immediate aftermath. A U.S. Navy veteran and former corrections officer, Turrubiate-Simpson had worked closely with the Murdaugh family for years and initially stood by them as investigators began to probe the case.
The Clues That Changed The Housekeeper’s Mind
The first signs surfaced the very next day at the family’s Moselle hunting property. According to Turrubiate-Simpson, Maggie’s Mercedes SUV was parked in an odd spot, a detail that struck her as wrong. Inside, she found a pair of Maggie’s pajamas laid out on the laundry room floor. Both details felt off, and she told People she “knew automatically that wasn’t her,” especially because Maggie planned to spend the night at the family’s main house.
Those incongruities led her to consider whether the scene had been staged — either to suggest Maggie intended to sleep at the lodge or to create a certain timeline. Turrubiate-Simpson didn’t know who might have done that, but the unease lingered.
In August 2021, another moment strengthened her doubts. Turrubiate-Simpson writes that Alex told her he had been wearing a different shirt on the night of the murders, saying, “You remember what I was wearing that day. You know, the Vinny Vines (Vineyard Vines) shirt.” She distinctly remembered otherwise — earlier that day, she says, she straightened the collar of another shirt Alex wore before leaving for work. “One thing was for sure,” she writes. “He was lying.”
As the investigation escalated, Turrubiate-Simpson’s private concerns grew. She relied on her training and experience to assess small inconsistencies — behavior that didn’t match the family’s routines and details that didn’t fit the day’s timeline. Each discrepancy, she says, chipped away at her initial certainty about Alex’s innocence.
What The Trial Revealed On Police Bodycam
Alex Murdaugh was arrested in July 2022 and later stood trial for the murders. In January 2023, during testimony featuring police bodycam footage from the first responding officer, Turrubiate-Simpson says she noticed a final, damning detail. The video showed Alex standing beside his Suburban; on the front passenger seat sat a beach towel.
That towel, she realized, was the same one she had washed, dried, and folded earlier that day and placed on a laundry room shelf at the main house. In her account to People, she recalls her reaction on seeing the footage: “I looked at the towel and I said, ‘Oh my God. He did it.’”
For Turrubiate-Simpson, the towel mattered because it didn’t align with Alex’s stated whereabouts. He claimed he was at his father’s house at the time of the murders, yet the freshly laundered towel would have been accessible at the main residence. In her book, she speculates that Alex “went to the laundry room, grabbed the towel to finish drying himself and possibly took the freshly washed T-shirt hanging there.”
By the time the jury delivered its verdict, Turrubiate-Simpson writes that her initial, unwavering trust had been replaced by a clear throughline of small details — from a misplaced SUV to a misremembered shirt and a beach towel that had no business in Alex’s vehicle. Together, those moments formed the pattern she could no longer ignore.
Verdict, Sentencing & Why This Story Resonates On Screen
Alex Murdaugh was found guilty of murdering Maggie and Paul and received two consecutive life sentences in prison. Separately, he was also found guilty of 22 federal financial crimes — including conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud, and money laundering — according to the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of South Carolina.
The Murdaugh case has been chronicled extensively in true-crime docuseries, including Netflix’s Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal and HBO’s Low Country: The Murdaugh Dynasty, each unpacking the family’s influence, the sprawling investigations, and the subsequent courtroom drama. Turrubiate-Simpson’s memoir adds a first-hand, inside-the-home perspective that complements those series, zeroing in on the domestic routines and small behavioral cues that broader overviews can miss.
For viewers who’ve followed the case on screen, her account offers granular context — how linens were handled, where vehicles were typically parked, and what an ordinary day in the Murdaugh household looked like. The most gripping beat might be the bodycam moment: a single item in a car seat that, in her telling, reframed an entire night.
Grounded in routine rather than revelation, Turrubiate-Simpson’s story highlights how investigations can turn on minute details and memory. It’s a perspective that resonates with true-crime audiences accustomed to piecing together timelines from seemingly mundane fragments. And for those who came to the case through television, the memoir provides a companion narrative from someone who lived inside the family’s day-to-day — and whose belief in Alex Murdaugh’s innocence finally broke under the weight of small, stubborn facts.
