Poison Dynasty

On January 15, 1921, five members of the infamous Bigham family of Pamplico, South Carolina, were gunned down in cold blood during a one-hour killing spree, resulting in the prosecution - across six years, three trials and many appeals - of Edmund Dalrimple Bigham for their murders. This was the culmination of a nearly one-hundred-year reign of terror by successive members of the Bigham family, including many other murders, as well as serial extortion, fraud and systematic embezzlement that the authorities were mostly powerless to stop.

Current interest in another five deaths, between 2015 and 2021, associated with another notorious South Carolina power family - the Murdaughs of Hampton - calls for a republication of J.A. Zeigler's thrilling account of the Bighams case, entitled 'The Last of the Bighams,' which details the cut and thrust, and the many twists and turns, as Edmund Bigham faced death by electrocution for what were deemed to have been his crimes.

'The Last of the Bighams' is introduced here by 'Poison Dynasty: A Short History of the Murderous Bighams of Florence County','which records the brutal earlier history of the family that led to a strong local desire for vengeance against at least one member of the family - the only one left alive.