- People traveled across state lines to bid on items from the Murdaugh family estate.
- About 3,000 people were in attendance, CBS News reported.
Thousands of people showed up to bid on items from the Murdaugh estate, some of them spending tens of thousands of dollars on the controversial family's possessions.
About 3,000 people attended the event at Liberty Auction in Pembroke, Georgia on Thursday, CBS News reported. It featured items from the South Carolina residence — which was recently sold— that was at the center of Alex Murdaugh's murder trial.
A court earlier this month sentenced the disgraced attorney to two consecutive life sentences for the 2021 murders of his wife and son, Maggie and Paul Murdaugh. In addition to the trial, dueling documentary series on Netflix and HBO Max charted the prominent family's rise and fall.
Attendees at the auction told WJCL that they traveled all the way from Alabama and Virginia.
"I am coming from Williamsburg, specifically the College of William and Mary," Lorelei Peterson said, according to the outlet. "My mom has been following the Murdaugh cases for the past four years or so, so we figured this would be a good wrap-up to the trial."
Items at the auction included furniture that sold for $30,000 and mounted antlers for which someone paid $10,000, according to WJCL. The family's clothes, picture frames, and hunting equipment were among the other things for sale. People even shared their experiences at the auction on TikTok.
"I think some people were nosy and just wanted to look at things," Emily McGarry, who works at Liberty Auction, told CBS News. "We had a lot of people who just wanted to have some sort of a token."
How the proceeds from the auction will be distributed was unclear. Liberty Auction did not immediately return Insider's request for comment.
Proceeds from the sale of the Murdaugh house will in part go toward Alex Murdaugh's legal fees and to his surviving son, Buster, as well as victims of a 2019 boat crash for which Paul Murdaugh was widely blamed, according to a local FOX affiliate.
So-called "murderabilia" — collecting memorabilia that once belonged to famous murderers — has grown in popularity alongside the explosion of the true crime genre. Following the release of the Netflix series "Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story," multiple items belonging to the serial killer were put on sale, including a pair of glasses that he donned in prison for $150,000, the Hill previously reported.