Paul Murdaugh testifies that voices are heard in a video filmed at the family’s dog kennels where the bodies of his wife and son were found
The former lawyer acknowledged his voice is heard in a video that appeared to be filmed at the dog kennels where the bodies of his wife and son were found. Prosecutors have used the video to put Murdaugh at the scene of the killings, contradicting his repeated statements to law enforcement that he had not been there that night.
A short video on Paul’s phone shows one of the family dogs being taken to the stables. David Britton Dove, a supervisor in the computer crimes center at the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, testified.
Three different voices could be heard in the footage, Dove testified Wednesday. And while Dove did not personally know the voices, he said, “You can tell that they’re different voices.”
Murdaugh claimed to law enforcement he last saw Maggie and Paul earlier in the evening of the murders. They ate dinner together before Murdaugh took a nap and then drove to Almeda to visit his mother. He discovered the bodies of his wife and son, he said, when he returned home and called 911 at 10:07 p.m.
At 8:40p.m., Paul Murdaugh asked if there was anything wrong with the dog Cash that was at the Murdaugh property. The two tried to hold a video call so that Gibson could see the dog, but the reception was not good enough, Gibson testified. He didn’t get to see the video he was promised by Paul Murdaugh if the call did not go through.
Prosecutor Waters of the South Carolina Attorney General’s Office – which is prosecuting the case due to the Murdaugh family’s decades-old ties with the local solicitor’s office – teased the video in his opening statement last week, saying that while Alex claimed to investigators he was napping at the house, video evidence would show he was present at the family’s kennels, where the bodies of his son and wife were found.
The opening statement by Harpootlian stated that the audio showed Murdaugh and his wife having a normal discussion. Paul is doing well, Harpootlian said. “Nobody’s down there threatening him. Daddy is not pulling out a shotgun and killing him.”
Wilson’s testimony comes three weeks into the murder trial for the killings of Maggie and Paul Murdaugh on June 7, 2021. Alex Murdaugh has pleaded not guilty to some charges.
Murdaugh was shot in the head on the 4th of September, but survived. That same month, he turned himself in after admitting he asked a former client to kill him during a fake car breakdown so Murdaugh’s oldest son, Buster, could get an insurance payout, police said.
Maggie’s phone showed repeated missed calls from her husband over the course of the next hour, Dove testified, along with evidence it had switched to portrait mode. That, the expert said, was another indication the phone was likely held in someone’s hand. A final call from Murdaugh was missed.
Waters told a jury last week that Murdaugh was going to visit his mother and text his wife before calling his wife.
Murdaugh’s bank account stole $5,000 from a personal jet when he was a teenager and asked for more information about his financial dealings
The display of the phone stopped at 8: 53 pm. At 8:54 p.m., the orientation changed to landscape and the camera activated – an indication, Dove said, the phone was moved and the camera tried to locate Maggie’s face in an unsuccessful attempt to unlock.
But those calls appeared to be missing from Murdaugh’s phone, Dove said Wednesday, testifying that call logs show a gap in calls between June 4 and 10:25 p.m. the night of June 7.
“A gap like that would indicate” that calls were “actually removed from there,” Dove said, adding the only way to remove the calls from the log would be to do so manually.
This behavior appeared to be outside Murdaugh’s typical texting habits, Dove testified, saying Murdaugh typically had a habit of checking texts within 5 minutes, or sometimes 30 to 40 minutes.
Another prosecution witness this week spoke about Murdaugh’s financial dealings. The chief financial officer of the law firm confronted Murdaugh about missing funds the morning of June 7, hours before the killings. Afterward, his coworkers offered him sympathy and gave him a reprieve on the financial issues.
The testimony of the CFO of the firm that was formerly known as PMPED was offered to the jury without the presence of a jury as the judge weighs whether or not to allow evidence relating to Murdaugh’s alleged schemes to be presented to the jury.
To cover the cost of the misappropriated money, “Each partner put up money and we refunded the money to the clients,” Seckinger told the court. She stated that Murdaugh stole it.
Seckinger testified she confronted Murdaugh on June 7 and told him she had reason to believe he had received the funds himself and that he needed to prove to her he had not.
Murdaugh was sued by the family of a teenager who was killed during a boat crash that was owned by Murdaugh. Prosecutors argued that a June 10, 2021, hearing in the civil case could reveal his financial problems.
The financial issues of Murdaugh have been the focus of much testimony this week. The judge overseeing the case said on Monday that the evidence was important to completion of the story and should be allowed.
But the June 10 hearing was canceled after Maggie and Paul’s deaths, Seckinger said Thursday, and the firm opted not to confront Murdaugh about the missing money.
Alex was upset after the killings and not in the office at all, Seckinger said. We had several months to clear it up after we thought nothing was missing. So we were not going to harass him at that point in time.”
June 28: The attorney general says Murdaugh and Smith have been indicted by a state grand jury. The indictment alleges Murdaugh gave Smith hundreds of checks over a number of years totaling about $2.4 million.
In opening statements of Alex Murdaugh’s murder trial, the prosecution went into a lengthy defense of the value and importance of circumstantial evidence.
The Attorney General’s Office believes it can focus on a few areas most tied to the Murdaugh family.
There are two things that are connected to this crime. Waters said that the confrontation with Ms. Seckinger was over missing fees. “And number two, is that pending hearing that very week in the boat case.”
The defense asked, can you think of a reason? The defense cross-examined a friend of Paul’s, who was asked if he could think of a reason why Murdaugh might commit the murders. The friend said he could not.
“And all of this going on in his life, which is a stellar series of events like nothing ever seen,” Waters said. “It is certainly relevant for the jury to consider when they consider the perfect storm that was arriving for this man on June the 7th.”
In the course of the trial, prosecutors try to place Murdaugh at the scene of the killings right before the crime with the assistance of a video clip.
Murdaugh had misappropriating funds and the checks played a key role in the discovery, according to testimony from his coworkers.
When Murdaugh and Crosby Came to America, the FBI found a blue rain jacket in the aftermath of the September 11 shootings
“And it was my understanding that Alex admitted it and that it was determined he would resign,” Seckinger said, adding the firm decided not to announce his resignation until the beginning of the following week.
Wilson is one of a series of witnesses who have accused Murdaugh of extensive financial wrongdoing at his namesake law firm. Prosecutors have argued that Murdaugh killed his wife and son to distract attention from his financial crimes and stave off a day of reckoning.
The forensic scientist found particles in the hands and clothing of Murdaugh and he was wearing shorts and a shirt on the night of the two deaths.
Primer is one of the things that make up an bullets in an round.
Defense attorneys argued to keep the blue rain jacket out of evidence after they heard about it in court. According to Mushell Smith, Murdaugh went to his mom’s home early the morning after the killings and found a blue tarp in his hands.
SLED agent Kristin Moore told the court later on Monday investigators found both a blue tarp and a blue rain jacket on the second floor of the mother’s home.
Crosby testified that Murdaugh told him that after he woke up, he went to his parents house which was 20 minutes away and when he got back, he found his parents dead.
She found Alex standing outside of his office, after looking for him that morning. He looked at me and asked, “What do you need now?” Clearly disgusted with me. she testified.
Seckinger said that no one at the firm worried about finding the missing money because they were worried about Alex.
The Murdaugh-Satterfield Cases: Attorney-Guided Judgment and the Attorney-Client/Construction
Alex Murdaugh admitted to having a drug addiction and was stealing money from his law firm and clients, stated an attorney who said he was the best friend of Murdaugh.
In order to complete the story of the case, the judge decided to allow the financial evidence to be admitted, saying it was so intricately connected with the state’s case that proof was needed. He has instructed jurors to only consider this financial evidence as part of the motive and not as a broader criticism of the defendant’s character.
Michael Satterfield testified that he heard that Murdaugh offered to file a claim against his insurance company in order to get some money for the boys. Satterfield didn’t know about Murdaugh’s collection of $4 million in settlements and didn’t see any money at all.
Wilson testified that he spoke with Murdaugh three times on the phone on June 7, 2021. Wilson said that the short conversations did not sound out of the ordinary.
Also in court Thursday, Michael “Tony” Satterfield, the son of Murdaugh’s former housekeeper Gloria Satterfield, testified about being defrauded by Murdaugh.
Satterfield testified that his family was aware of the settlement through media reports. He said when he asked Murdaugh about it in June 2021, Murdaugh told him “it was still making progress” and to be ready to settle by the end of the year.
Alex Murdaugh resigned from his job as a marine captain and allegedly stole $350,000 from his bank account in a double-murder trial
The CEO of the local bank testified that Murdaugh had $350,000 taken from his account. As of August 2021, Murdaugh had a total debt to the bank of $4.2 million, according to Palmetto State Bank CEO Jan Malinowski.
Tinsley continued testifying Friday after finishing his testimony on Thursday. He represents the family of the 19-year-old Beach, who was killed when a boat owned by Alex Murdaugh and allegedly driven by Paul Murdaugh crashed.
The CFO said that they wouldn’t harass him about money when he was worried about his mental state and his family had been killed.
He resigned, had a murder-for-hire and insurance scam plotted and spent time in a rehabilitation center, when he was confronted about his misdeeds again by his law firm.
Maggie Murdaugh was worried about money possibly being demanded of her family in a lawsuit and suspicious her husband wasn’t being entirely honest with her in the days before her killing, housekeeper Blanca Turrubiate-Simpson testified Friday in the double-murder trial of Alex Murdaugh.
“She was concerned about the amount of money that they were requesting in that lawsuit – $30 million is what she told me,” Turrubiate-Simpson said. “She said she knew the amount of money they were asking.
“He said there was going to be people probably stopping by and bringing food and stuff,” Turrubiate-Simpson said. “He said I just want the house to look the way Maggie would like for it to look. I went to the house after I said OK.
Murdaugh, Goettee, and Turrubiate-Simpson denounced a videotape of the murders of his wife and son
The prosecution was going to cross-examine Alex Murdaugh again on Friday in his trial for the murders of his wife and son.
Ahead of Turrubiate-Simpson’s testimony, some Murdaugh relatives were ordered this week to sit farther back in the South Carolina courtroom due to inappropriate contact and conduct, the Colleton County clerk of court said.
In court Wednesday, Alex Murdaugh’s sister Lynn Murdaugh Goettee passed him a book through a member of his defense team. It was not shared with the victim’s advocate, and Goettee had been admonished just five minutes before that, a source with knowledge of the incident told CNN.
The source said Murdaugh had already been in his jail cell with the book when they could check it. The book – John Grisham’s “The Judge’s List” – was later confiscated.
Hill said that the younger Murdaugh was admonished for the incident. Lynn Murdaugh Goettee and Buster Murdaugh can expect to be barred from the courtroom if they violate any more rules.
Wednesday was interrupted when a bomb threat was phoned into the clerk’s office, and the courthouse was evacuated, Hill said. Court resumed hours later.
If attorneys are correct, closing arguments could start around February 23 after the scheduled end date on Friday.
The defense will need at least a week, and the state hopes to rest it’s case in the middle of next week, according to the prosecutor.
The defense has out-of-state expert witnesses who will require travel and lodging, Harpootlian said, pointing out the length of the state’s case is making that difficult and expensive to schedule. The state so far has called 44 witnesses and introduced more than 400 exhibits of evidence.
He said that he wanted the judge to allow the jury to visit Moselle, the hunting property where the Murdaughs were killed.
The video had been shown to the jury in January, but Monday was the first time the public could watch Murdaugh’s actions as deputies arrived at his home on the family’s estate after he placed a 911 call.
The deputy asked the man if the gun he brought to the scene was from inside the home. Murdaugh says yes after giving his own reasoning as to why someone would kill his family.
Murdaugh said the gun is leaning against his vehicle as the deputy questioned where it was. The deputy checks Murdaugh’s shirt before talking further.
“This is a long story. A few months back my son was in a boat wreck. He’s been getting threats, says Murdaugh. “Most of it’s been benign stuff. He has been getting punched, but we didn’t take it seriously. I know that it is.
According to the data, Murdaugh stayed at his parents home for a short while before heading back to the Moselle property.
Ellen Murdaugh and the Results of their Autopsy: Evidence from a Case Study in Charleston, South Carolina, during a Trilemma
Also Monday, under questioning from the prosecution, Ellen Riemer, a pathologist at the Medical University of South Carolina, gave graphic testimony Monday about the injuries suffered by Maggie and Paul and their autopsy results.
Alex Murdaugh cried when Riemer detailed the extent of the wounds to his son and wife, and dabbed his eyes and clenched his jaw. He shook his head as he listened.
Paul Murdaugh was shot twice with a shotgun, Riemer said. The shot damaged his lung but it wasn’t fatal as it went through his chest and arm. The shot went through the top of his left shoulder, then went through the left side of his head, then hit the right side of his neck.
Riemer testified there were no signs on his hands that he was bracing himself for the injury. “That first shot, his arm was down, and I don’t see any evidence of injury to his hands from the second.”
The next shot went upward, starting at Maggie’s chest and going through the left side of her face. According to Riemer, it was caused by the first two shots that caused Maggie to double over. She said that the wound would have been fatal. The last gunshot, Riemer testified, was to the back of the head.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/13/us/alex-murdaugh-trial-monday/index.html
The Murdaugh Dynasty and the Case for a Loved Father, a Criminal Lawyer, and an Investigator for Crime Scene Investigation
The remaining jurors were tested Monday and will be tested again Wednesday. When the judge delayed the proceedings, prosecutors and defense attorneys talked, but he said that jurors could wear masks if they wanted to.
Editor’s Note: The HBO docuseries “Low Country: The Murdaugh Dynasty” chronicles the family’s influence in South Carolina. On Sunday, February 19 at 8 pm, CNN will broadcast it.
Murdaugh also offered jurors alternatives as to who may have committed the crime – therefore helping sow reasonable doubt, Jackson said. Murdaugh talked about his addiction and the fact that he may have been coming into contact with people who were drug dealers, and also mentioned the threats that Paul received after he was involved in a fatal boating accident.
The description of a nonprescription nighttime cold and flu medication matches the search term “green gel pill p30,” which was done byMaggie on May 26.
The defense showed a text that Alex Murdaugh sent to his wife the day after he committed the crime. I love you.”
The defense has portrayed the defendant as a loving father and husband who called 911 after finding his wife and son, and who is being prosecuted after a poorly handled investigation while the real killers remain at large.
The killings may have been related to a money dispute between Smith andMurdaugh, according to the court, which was told that Murdaugh was buying $50,000 worth of drugs each week from Smith. Owen said he has been told similar things.
The Murdaugh Family and the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division in the Case of the Roadside Killing of Paul and Maggie on June 7, 2021
On Friday, the defense’s first witness, Richard Harvey, said he estimated the times of death for Paul andMaggie to be around 9 p.m. on June 7, 2021.
The day after the roadside incident, Owen testified, Smith was brought into the investigation. Before that, Murdaugh had never mentioned his involvement with Smith in relation to Maggie’s and Paul’s killings, according to Owen.
The investigator with the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, Peter Rudofski, said that he was able to plot Murdaugh’s movements on the night of the murders thanks to the latitude, longitude and speed data provided by General GM.
Rudofski stated that in the middle of the night, Murdaugh drove by the spot on the side of the road where the cell phone was recovered.
The investigator said that Murdaugh went to the family dog kennels at the back of the Moselle property at about 10 p.m. after turning into the front entrance.
He told investigators that when he arrived at the scene of the murders, he tried to turn Paul over, and tried to check Paul’s cell phone, before calling the police.
The case was moved to the attorney general’s office because of the long standing ties the Murdaugh family had with the local solicitor.
The agents of the SLED confronted Murdaugh about the conflicting evidence that appeared to undermine his earlier statements.
Murdaugh and the Agents of the Killings: The Night of the Morse filmed by Paul in Moselle, Maine
“And Rogan’s been around your family for pretty much all his life,” Owen said, something Murdaugh agreed with. “And he recognizes your voice, and you have a distinct voice. Can you think of anybody else that has a voice similar to yours that he may have misinterpreted?”
The agents confronted Murdaugh about a previously unseen video he watched on social media, which was filmed by Paul the night of the killings. In it, Murdaugh is seen wearing pants and a blue shirt. He was wearing shorts and a white shirt.
There’s a video on your phone with Paul on the farm. You wore khaki pants and a dress shirt when I met you, Owen said. “At what point in the evening did you change clothes?”
On Tuesday, Murdaugh was claimed to have been the one who wanted Margaret to go to Moselle. Marian Proctor recalled a conversation they had the day of the murders, in which she said that Maggie was not interested in going to Islandton.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/15/us/alex-murdaugh-trial-wednesday/index.html
The Case for Alex Murdaugh, aka Alex Smith, is Just as Good as Direct Evidence, but Is Not a Circumstantial Case
“And the reason you didn’t, (was because) you weren’t concerned about those clothes. Your investigation had been focused since early June on the T-shirt he was wearing, the shorts he was wearing and shoes he was wearing at the time he called 911,” Griffin said.
Owen testified that the expert found multiple particles of blood spatter on the front of the shirt and it was sent to a lab for testing. The test, however, found no blood on the shirt.
“Y’all completely overlooked the fact that when you did a HemaTrace test to confirm whether there’s blood, it came up negative. “Didn’t that not be overlooked?” asked the man.
“Whoever killed Maggie and Paul would likely have biological material on them from the blasts that killed the two victims, right?,” Griffin asked Owen.
Griffin said Smith owed a lot of money to a drug gang, and Owen testified that he was told the gang was not worried about the money because it knew it was going to get paid.
Did Alex Murdaugh mention anyone to you before that day that he might have been involved in his son or wife’s murder?
When asked if a cell phone analysis was done to see if any of the drug gang members were in the area the night of the killings, Owen said they didn’t have their phone numbers. But state investigators performed an analysis around Moselle and had identified only first responders as coming to the scene, Owen said.
The defense attorney also asked Owen if any DNA analysis had been done to match a small amount of unknown male DNA found under Maggie Murdaugh’s fingernail. Owen said no.
“A lot of times people hear, ‘Oh, it’s just a circumstantial case,’ but the law says otherwise,” prosecutor Creighton Waters told the jury. “The law says circumstantial evidence is just as good as direct evidence.”
Legal experts who have followed the trial told CNN the prosecution’s lack of direct evidence makes it harder to convict – though certainly not impossible.
“It does make the case more difficult,” said trial attorney Misty Marris. “But at some point, if the prosecutors have enough evidence that they can put together that story, and show motive and opportunity, it can certainly rise to the level needed to get a conviction.
The Case for a Loved Dad: The Murdaugh Family of a 12-year-old Missing Mariner and a Murder in Islandton
The video focuses on one of their dogs and appears to have been recorded at the kennels at their family home in Islandton. In the background, three different voices can be heard in the footage, and family friends identified those voices as that of Paul, Maggie and Alex Murdaugh.
The prosecution has used that Snapchat video to try to disprove his assertion that he was asleep, and other testimony has also cut into his claims about how long he had been with his mother.
The defense has painted Murdaugh as a loving father and husband being wrongfully accused after what it says has been a poorly handled investigation. He testified on the first day of his testimony.
The attorneys for Alex Murdaugh called his son to testify in the double murder trial on Tuesday, as they tried to counter the allegations of Murdaugh killing his wife and son.
Buster Murdaugh was called as the defense’s first witness of the day. He is expected to be followed by an accident reconstructionist who will likely focus on investigators’ findings at the killing scene, including how the it was treated and what conclusions were drawn as a result, a source familiar with the case previously told CNN.
Being in the right place at the right time is one thing, but being in Alex Murdaugh’s trial is quite another, and that is where the success of the true-crime genre lies. What “Murdaugh Murders” doesn’t do, ultimately, is make much of a case for watching it.
Indeed, if ever a true-crime docuseries would have benefited from using a narrator, it’s this one; instead, the producers let the group of friends who were swept up in the tragic boat accident that claimed the life of 19-year-old Mallory Beach drone on, augmenting their accounts with blurry reenactments that look like something out of a cheap horror movie.
The Murdaugh family and its wealth and influence over the authorities have been accused of protecting Paul, who had a history of drinking excessively and driving the boat.
There are inconsistencies and allegations that the Murdaughs did not come under scrutiny in the face of suspicious events, like the death of a housekeeping worker, Gloria Satterfield, who they claimed was seriously injured by the family dog.
During a Thursday court appearance, Murdaugh admitted to stealing from the law firm and its clients which eventually lead to his departure from the firm, renamed Parker Law Group.
Murdaugh admitted that he took money that was not his and that he shouldn’t have done it.
The Night of the Slayings: Murdaugh, Waters, and the Road to Addiction Using Hydrocodone as a Tool During a Car Accident
Upon returning to the house in Islandton after visiting his mother, Murdaugh said, Margaret and Paul weren’t there – and he assumed they still were at the kennels, so he went back there.
Murdaugh went back and forth between them while on the phone and called the emergency number. Paul’s injuries were particularly bad, Murdaugh said, and he recalled trying to check his son’s body for a pulse and trying to turn him over.
It was an emotional Murdaugh who said that he didn’t know why he tried to turn him over. “I mean, my boy’s laying face down. He has done it the way he has done it. The way his head was was what he wanted it to be. I could see his brain laying on the sidewalk. I didn’t know what to do.”
Referring to cell phone data and other evidence from the night of the slayings, Waters sought to poke holes in Murdaugh’s account of his whereabouts at the time.
Murdaugh testified he believes his addiction stemmed from surgery he got for an old college football injury. He said he needed a few surgeries, and he started getting addicted to hydrocodone around 2004 before moving on to oxycodone around 2008.
When asked if the drug transaction actually took place, Murdaugh said he did not know because after the withdrawal symptoms started, he changed his plan.
The Murdaugh Family of South Carolina: The 2016 South Carolina Supervised Attorney General Reopens its Investigative Investigation into the 2016 June 7 Shooting
For 87 years, the Murdaugh family name came to represent a legal dynasty in coastal South Carolina, where three successive generations controlled the local prosecutor’s office.
But now, the family has been closely connected to a bloody tragedy, allegations of embezzlement and a bizarre murder-for-hire plot to score millions in life insurance.
In 2006, then-Gov. Mark Sanford appoints attorney Duffie Stone to serve as the 14th Circuit Solicitor, making him the first non-Murdaugh in the position. He has been elected to the position four times since, most recently in 2020, according to the solicitor’s website.
June 3: South Carolina law enforcement officials announce they sought and received permission from the family of Gloria Satterfield, Murdaugh’s housekeeper, to exhume her remains.
The South Carolina Attorney General tells CNN that a boat crashed into a bridge in South Carolina, killing a teenager.
Paul Murdaugh is indicted in April on charges of boating under the influence (BUI) causing great bodily harm and causing death in connection to the crash, court records show. He pleaded not guilty.
June 15: SLED releases basic information about the June 7 killings, saying Alex Murdaugh called 911 at 10:07 p.m. and investigators collected evidence that night and the next morning.
September 10: A family spokesperson issues a statement about Alex Murdaugh’s shooting that indicates the injury was more serious than a superficial wound. An unknown person was to blame, according to the spokesman.
June 22: SLED reopens an investigation into the unsolved death of 19-year-old Stephen Smith, whose body was found on the road in 2015 in Hampton County. The agency says the probe is being reopened based on information gathered while investigating the deaths of Maggie and Paul Murdaugh.
The $100,000 reward for information regarding the killings of Maggie and Paul was announced on June 25th by AlexMurdaugh and his other son, Buster.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/15/us/murdaugh-family-deaths-timeline/index.html
Murdaugh’s Deception Revisited: He Was Not Interested in What Happened to Stone When he Was Shot on a Road in Hampton County
Stone wrote a letter to South Carolina’s attorney general saying he would not be involved in the Murdaugh death investigations.
A spokesman for the SLED said Murdaugh called for help after he was shot on a road in Hampton County. He was taken to a hospital in Savannah, Georgia, where he was treated for a “superficial gunshot wound to the head,” the statement said.
“Alex pulled over after seeing a low tire indicator light. A male driver in a blue pickup asked him if he had car troubles, as soon as Alex replied, he was shot,” the statement said.
September 26: The PMPED law firm claims that Murdaugh lied and stole from them. The firm says no member was aware of “Alex’s scheme” or his drug addiction.
On October 14th, Alex Murdaugh was arrested in Florida for misappropriating settlement funds in connection with the death of Gloria Satterfield.
November 12: Alex Murdaugh cites privilege against self-incrimination in declining to respond to allegations by his former law firm that he converted firm and client money to his own personal use, according to court filings.
The Murdaugh-Satterfield Settlement and the 2019 Wreck-Induced Intent Controversy Survivors Acting on an Assisting Lawyer
Four counts of trust with fraudulent intent are included, as are seven counts of getting signature or property by false pretenses, as well as money and computer crimes.
December 14: Eric Bland, the family lawyer, said that Murdaugh had reached a settlement with the family of Gloria Satterfield.
The exhumation is the result of a criminal investigation into the death of Satterfield.
The death of the victim was not reported to the Coroner at the time. The manner of death was ruled natural, which was inconsistent with injuries sustained in a trip and fall accident, according to the coroner’s request.
The court adjourned for the weekend after about six hours of testimony on Friday, and will be back on Monday.
“And you disagree to my characterization that you’ve got a photographic memory about the details that have to fit now that you know … these facts but you’re fuzzy on the other stuff that complicates that? You disagree with that?”
At one point Friday, Waters asked if the dogs at his property were barking when he was there with his wife and son.
“I know what I wasn’t doing, Mr. Waters, and what I wasn’t doing is doing anything, as I believe you’ve implied, that I was cleaning off or … washing off guns or putting guns in a raincoat. And I can promise you that I wasn’t doing any of that,” Murdaugh said.
“I never manufactured any alibi in any way shape or form because I did not, and would not, hurt my wife and my child,” he said. “So I know for a fact that I never, ever, ever created an alibi.”
The person or people who did what I saw on June 7 hated Paul Murdaugh, he testified. “And they had anger in their heart.”
Murdaugh testified he did not believe anyone involved in the 2019 wreck had anything to do with the murders. He said he believed that the killer was someone who heard about it.
Earlier Friday, Waters also focused on the financial crimes the state alleges drove Murdaugh to murder, asking the former lawyer during whether the clients he stole from are “real people.”
After a brief break, Murdaugh’s defense attorney, Jim Griffin, began questioning Waters again after he concluded his cross examination. The court adjourned for the day after the questioning was over.
Murdaugh: Why did you not show up for the hearing? How much did you do you need to testify? When did you realize that you weren’t there?
“They are real people. They’re good people. They’re all people that I care about … And a lot of them people that I love and I did wrong by them,” Murdaugh said.
“Whether that came from me looking them in the eye or not, I can’t answer that. But I will agree with you that every single client I looked them in the eye and I believe that the people that I stole money from for all those years trusted me.”
“I did lie to them,” he said of his comments to investigators that he had not been that day to the estate’s dog kennels, where the bodies of Maggie and Paul were found, until he found them dead. He said he lied because of “paranoid thinking” stemming from his addiction to opiate painkillers.
During his testimony Thursday, Murdaugh is expected to be asked about allegations of financial wrongdoing, as well as a defense request to limit the scope of questioning.
He said various factors contributed to his “paranoid thinking” which led to his decision to lie to police, including his “distrust of SLED,” (South Carolina Law Enforcement Division), questions about his relationship with his wife and son, and “the fact that I have a pocket full of pills in my pocket,” he said. The police interview was played by the prosecution.
Legal experts told CNN that it was a bold move by the defense to have Murdaugh testify. While many attorneys don’t like to put their clients on the stand because it’s hard to predict what questions prosecutors will ask and how the jury will perceive the accused, Murdaugh was the prime defendant for the job, experts said.
“If you’re going to have somebody testify, having a lawyer who’s smart, who’s been in the courtroom, who’s lied for 20 years … that’s the guy you want on the stand,” criminal defense attorney and former prosecutor Mark Eiglarsh said. All it takes is one juror to connect with him.
While defendants can often find themselves at a disadvantage when taking the stand, in this case, several attorneys told CNN Murdaugh practically had no choice but to testify.
“It’s the million dollar question that everybody wanted to know: why did you lie that you were not at the kennels? So he had to give an explanation as to that,” criminal defense attorney and former prosecutor Bernarda Villalona said. “That’s what I think is the main reason why the criminal defense attorney in this case made a calculated decision to put him on the stand.”
Legal experts said that the defense may have been attempting to garner sympathy for their client, by trying to show the jurors that Murdaugh was clean when he admitted to a number of financial crimes.
“They’re trying to use it for a very positive effect, to show that he had a problem (with addiction), he is sympathetic for trying to wrestle with it and that that may have made him paranoid and caused him to distrust the police and telling them this lie about not being there,” defense attorney Shan Wu said.
“But if he was that addled by the addiction, he might have been acting very irrationally at the time and the jury might believe that this very opioid-addicted person went off into this paranoid frenzy and did slaughter his own family,” Wu noted. It is a double-edged sword.
Joey Jackson, a criminal defense attorney and CNN legal analyst, said that if the prosecutors were to say that he was a liar, cheat, and can’t be trusted you should not take anything he says at face value.
Murdaugh and his wife Margaret are not murderers. The killer killed their dog kennels in Islandton, South Carolina on June 7, 2021
Experts said that Murdaugh was a model witness. When he spoke, he looked straight at the jurors and talked about his dead wife and son. During his testimony, he called his son Paul-Paul and his wifeMags.
The biggest sticking point for the prosecution is if he would really do it, according to a law professor. “Despite all the other crimes he’s admitted to, would he actually kill his wife and son?
Monday’s testimony was headlined by an expert in crime scene reconstruction and blood spatter analysis who testified that the evidence suggests two shooters carried out the killings of Margaret and Paul Murdaugh in June 2021.
The defense of Alex Murdaugh hired a former professor of forensic science to review his case and analyze the crime scene.
He said that it was difficult for a shooter to have two long weapons and no reason for that to happen. I believe it is in favor of the probability of two shooters if you add that to what I believe happened to the shooter who fired first.
He has pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder and two weapons charges in the fatal shootings at the dog kennels of their family estate in Islandton, South Carolina, on June 7, 2021. He separately faces 99 charges for alleged financial crimes that will be adjudicated at a future date.
The Murdaugh Family’s Case for Rebuttal Presented to the High Court on March 23rd and March 22nd, 2015. The Interdisciplinary Jurors
The prosecution plans to seek rebuttal testimony from at least four or five witnesses on Tuesday. After rebuttal witnesses, jurors are allowed to visit the family’s estate prior to closing arguments, according to the judge.
John Marvin Murdaugh testified that law enforcement did not clean up the remains of his brother Paul Murdaugh, even though they released the crime scene to the family.
“It had not been cleaned up. I saw blood, I saw brains, I saw pieces of skull,” he testified through tears. “For some reason I thought it was something that I needed to do for Paul to clean it up. It was the right thing to do. I felt like I owed him, and I started cleaning. I can promise you no mother or father or aunt or uncle should ever have to see and do what I did that day.”
The defense also worked to show that investigators had done a shoddy job with the case, particularly in securing the crime scene. Mark Ball testified that there were no police tape or barricades around the entrance of the property and that the remains of Paul were there before investigators left.
In order to divert the investigations into his actions, they tried to prove he lied to investigators and that there was a fraudster who killed his wife and son.
After that shooting, he was in rehab for drug addiction, and was accused of financial crimes and murder.