A "Murder Mystery Masquerade Ball" with a dinner theater plot about a small town mover-and-shaker caught up in a deadly scandal is too close to home for some in Hampton, South Carolina.
Hampton is the home of accused double-murderer and alleged financial philanderer Alex Murdaugh, whose family dominated legal and social affairs in Hampton County for four generations.
The Halloween themed Murder Mystery Masquerade Ball is scheduled for the night of October 29th at the Stanley Center of the County's Arts Council. Its executive director as well as,the co-sponsoring Friends of the Fine Arts insist the scripted entertainment package was bought long before Alex Murdaugh's barrage of fraud indictments, let alone the murders of his wife and son.
That's not the right answer to a group of outraged residents who say that, at minimum, the event will be hugely embarrassing and potentially prejudicial to Murdaugh's trial early next year. But the "Murder Mystery Masquerade Ball" is the arts community's prime source of local funding, and organizers say "the show must go on."
