Former Housekeeper Says Callous Detail About the Murdaugh Murders Haunts Her the Most (Exclusive) By KC Baker

Blanca Turrubiate-Simpson dropped the phone when Alex Murdaugh called her at 6 a.m. on June 8, 2021, and told her that his wife, Maggie Murdaugh, 52, and their son, Paul Murdaugh, 22, were dead.

“They’re gone, B! They’re gone!” he told her, she writes in her new memoir, Within the House of Murdaugh: Amid a Unique Friendship — Blanca and Maggie, out this month and co-authored with Mary Frances Weaver.

Simpson, 58, had worked for the once-influential Murdaugh family since 2007. She became close to them while caring for their Hampton home, then Moselle in Islandton and their house on Edisto Island.

While she says some in the community looked down on her because she is Mexican-American, “The Murdaughs never once treated me in that way,” she tells PEOPLE. “They always treated me like family.”

She and Maggie grew particularly close over the years, since they spent so much time together.

Their bond grew even stronger when Maggie was allegedly shunned by community members after Paul’s drunken boat crash that claimed the life of Mallory Beach, 19. He was charged with boating under the influence causing death and was awaiting trial when he was killed. 

But some in the community allegedly felt that Paul was getting preferential treatment because his powerful family, including his father and grandfather, had served as prosecutors and lawyers in Colleton County for more than a century.

Back in 2021, Simpson was devastated when she learned the grisly details surrounding the brutal slayings of Paul and Maggie. Paul’s body was found half inside and half outside of the kennel’s feed room on the Moselle property. He had been shot at point-blank range in the chest and in the head with a shotgun.

At 12:45 a.m., more than two hours after calling 911, Alex was heard on police car camera footage breaking down as he described to detectives what he says he saw when he got to the kennels and found the bodies of his wife and son.

“I knew it was really bad,” Murdaugh said through sobs. “I could see his brain.”

During Alex’s 2023 trial for the murders, defense attorney Dick Harpootlian relayed even more graphic details, telling jurors that Alex found his son  “laying in his own blood with his brain lying at his feet.”

After checking on Paul, Alex said he ran over to Maggie, who had been shot five times with an automatic rifle. She was initially shot while she was standing or running, a crime scene expert testified. She fell to her knees and was killed by a fatal shot to the head.

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Even though Simpson was a US Navy veteran and a former corrections officer, those details were difficult to hear.

In March 2023, Alex was found guilty of murdering Maggie and Paul and was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences in prison without the possibility of parole. He was later found guilty of a slew of financial crimes. He is appealing the murder conviction.

Coming to terms with the fact that the man she trusted and liked killed Maggie and Paul has been even more difficult.

But, she tells PEOPLE, “What hurts me the most is that he left them there out in the dark and the cold,” on the night of the murders, especially when coyotes and other wild animals are prowling around.

“She was scared of going out at night,” she says of Maggie — a detail all the more haunting given how Maggie’s body was found.

For more about Blanca Turrubiate-Simpson and the Murdaugh family, subscribe now to PEOPLE or pick up this week’s issue, on newsstands Friday.

Weaver, the book’s co-author, tells PEOPLE: “It’s hard to believe [Maggie] went down there in the first place. It was unusual for her to go down there. She was that afraid of it.”

Adds Simpson: “Just the idea of him just leaving them there. You would have had to fight me to get me off of my kid or spouse,” she says.

She doesn’t understand why Alex didn’t cover their bodies.

She also takes issue with how relatively calm Alex was when police first pulled up to the kennels at Moselle and spoke to him.

He cried in spurts but said, “Hey, how you doin?” when an officer first arrived, says Weaver.

“The way he appeared in the video does not match the love and nurturing I saw him show his family over the years,” she says.

Within the House of Murdaugh: Amid a Unique Friendship — Blanca and Maggie is available for preorder now.