The man Alex Murdaugh asked to shoot and kill him now claims the then-powerful legal scion admitted he wanted to die because he knew cops would soon “prove” he was “responsible” for his murdered wife and son.

Curtis Eddie Smith, a 62-year-old distant cousin and ex-client of Murdaugh’s, made the bombshell claim in the new season of Netflix’s “Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal,” released Wednesday.

“I said, ‘Why you want me to shoot you?'” Smith claimed of the harebrained plot in September 2021, just three months after Murdaugh’s wife, Maggie, 52, and 22-year-old son Paul were gunned down.

“‘Cos they’re gonna to be able to prove that I was responsible for Maggie and Paul,'” he alleges Murdaugh replied.

Murdaugh was already paranoid when he first asked to meet him at a funeral home to discuss the doomed plot to kill, Smith said, detailing how the then-powerful lawyer “pulled the sun visor around” and “rolls his window up so I’m looking at him through a hole.”

“He goes, ‘Well, I don’t need to be seen in town,’ and he said, ‘Well, I’m being watched,'” Smith recalled.

Asked who was watching him, Murdaugh said SLED, referring to the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, which always eyed him as the prime suspect in the murders of his wife and son.

“I said, ‘Why are they watching you for?’ and he said, ‘Well, you know, about what happened,” Smith claimed.

“I said, ‘You mean out at Moselle?’” he said, referring to the sprawling estate where Murdaugh called 911 to report his wife and son’s murders by the dog kennels in June 2021.

“He said, ‘Yeah … Things just got all f–ed up.’ Just like that,” Smith said.

At that point, Smith said, Murdaugh asked him if he loved him, to which his cousin replied, “Yeah like a brother, you know that. I’d do most anything for you.”’

That is when, Smith said, Murdaugh asked him to “shoot me and kill me.”

The alleged accomplice said he immediately refused, saying: “That ain’t happening. Not today, not tomorrow. It ain’t happening.”

“And he just [says] … ‘Well, I guess I got to try to do it myself,’” and took off.

Smith said he was concerned about Murdaugh following the conversation, and immediately chased after him.

“Good Lord, Maggie and Paul was already dead, Mr. Randolph died three or four days later,” he remembered thinking, referring to Alex’s father. “The family don’t need a whole lot more going on.

“And when I pulled up there, and I rolled the window down, he’s coming up to my window with a gun,” Smith said.

He claimed he wanted to “scare some sense into him” and fired his own weapon into the air on the rural road in Hampton County.

Upon hearing the gunshot, Smith claims, Murdaugh “just hit the asphalt just like that.

“That’s where that spot on the back of his head [comes] from, from the rocks sticking up on the side of the road, not from a bullet bounced off his head from less than six [feet] behind him.”

He said he “knew I hadn’t shot him.”

“I knew there wasn’t no blood on him, there wasn’t no blood on me. So I went home.”

Murdaugh called 911 to say he was shot in a drive-by shooting while changing a tire, and was brought to a local hospital for what police called a “superficial gunshot wound to the head.”

As questions mounted about the shooting, Murdaugh admitted to the assisted suicide plot, claiming Smith was responsible for the gunshot that grazed his head.

He claimed at the time that he hatched the plan so his surviving son, Buster, could collect on a $10 million insurance policy.

Murdaugh is serving a life sentence for the murders of Paul and Maggie. 

However, he always denied being the killer, and has lodged an appeal on alleged witness tampering.

Murdaugh has, however, admitted stealing millions from clients. He faces money laundering, wire fraud, bank fraud and other charges.

He has reached a plea deal with prosecutors in his federal financial crimes case — and must fork over millions of dollars to former clients.

The plea agreement would require Murdaugh to pay back $9 million and fully cooperate with investigators by providing “full, complete and truthful information about all criminal activities,” the documents state.

In April, he was granted bond following claims of declining health, and is speaking out about the alleged shooting on Sept. 4, 2021.

Smith was indicted on a slew of charges over the plot.

He has repeatedly claimed he is innocent, previously telling The Post he was set up by the renowned lawyer — and in the latest Netflix interview repeating his claim that he did not actually shoot the double killer.

Attorneys for Murdaugh did not immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday.