The Murdaugh Cases, Griffin’s Witnesses, and the Suspensions of Michael Satterfield and his Son Gloria
As for the lies Murdaugh admitted telling, Griffin said his client lied because “that’s what addicts do.” He said that Murdaugh had a closet full of skeletons that he didn’t want to be exposed to.
Another witness talked about the financial dealings of Murdaugh. The chief financial officer of his law firm testified she had confronted Murdaugh about missing funds on the morning of June 7, hours before the killings. His coworkers offered him sympathy and gave him a reprieve on the financial issues.
Murdaugh, 54, is accused of fatally shooting his wife, Margaret “Maggie” Murdaugh, and son Paul Murdaugh by the family’s dog kennels at their sprawling property known as Moselle in Islandton, South Carolina, on the night of June 7, 2021. He has pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder and two weapons charges.
The lack of a murder weapon, bloody clothing or witnesses that connect Murdaugh to the killings is highlighted by the focus of the prosecution. Instead, they have hinged their case on circumstantial evidence, including the consequential video placing Murdaugh at the crime scene that night.
They have more evidence of financial mismanagement than they do of guilt in a murder case. Last week, defense lawyer Jim Griffin said that is what this is all about.
Murdaugh offered to file a claim against his insurance company to get money for his housekeeper’s sons, Michael Satterfield testified. Satterfield didn’t even know that Murdaugh had collected more than $4 million in settlements.
According to testimony from his coworkers, Murdaugh had misappropriated funds, and the checks played a crucial role in the discovery.
The son of Gloria Satterfield testified in court Thursday about being cheated by Murdaugh.
Satterfield testified that he learned of the settlement from his family, who heard about it through media reports. He said that Murdaugh told him it was making progress and to be ready to settle by the end of the year.
Murdaugh, Malinowski, and Tinsley, in the case of a boat wreck: An attorney’s testimony at the South Carolina Supreme Court
It was shown to the jury by the CEO of the local bank that Murdaugh’s account had been taken out of bounds. Jan Malinowski stated that Murdaugh had total debt to the bank of $4.2 million.
Thursday’s session ended with attorney Mark Tinsley on the stand. There was a tragedy in February of this year, when a boat owned by Murdaugh and allegedly driven by Paul crashed and killed a 19-year-old girl.
On Thursday, the prosecution asked Tinsley about how that lawsuit was proceeding. He said he was seeking $10 million from Murdaugh, but that he might only get $1 million. Tinsley’s testimony is expected to resume Friday morning.
“We weren’t going to go in there and harass him about money when we were worried about his mental state and the fact that his family had been killed,” the CFO, Jeanne Seckinger, testified.
His law firm confronted him again about hismisappropriation of funds, and this time he resigned, along with dozens of financial crimes and a murder-for-hire plot.
Murdaugh was expected to serve 30 years to life in prison for each murder conviction. Prosecutors had said they would seek a punishment of life in prison without parole for Murdaugh.
The defense team for the disbarred South Carolina attorney charged in the deaths of his wife and son made their closing argument earlier in the day.
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 prosecution played clips of the police interview.
Waters pointed to a missing thing from Murdaugh’s testimony in the closing argument. Waters wondered if Murdaugh had regretted not remaining at the kennel, to possibly protect his wife and child.
A connection to a boat crash. Waters questioned Murdaugh about the idea that a random thug could be involved in the murders of his family. Murdaugh testified that he believed a fatal boat wreck that Paul Murdaugh was involved in was the reason for the killings. He thought that someone who had heard about the killings might have been involved in the boat wreck.
Pill addiction: In the months leading up to the deaths of his wife and son, Murdaugh said he took more than two thousand ounces of oxycodone a day.
Paul Murdaugh and the Last Time I Saw My Wife and Mother, and Child, When I Was Seeing Your Own Phone. Appellate Assistant Attorney John Waters explains why murders at Moselle happened
“This defendant has fooled everyone — everyone who thought they were close to him,” Waters said. “He fooled Maggie and Paul, too, and they paid for it with their lives. Don’t allow him to fool you.
The evidence that you have heard shows that he was addicted to money and depended on it so much that he stole millions of dollars in legal fees.
Waters reconstructed a timeline of the prosecutions version of events prior to and after the murders by the dogs at Moselle.
Audio from Murdaugh’s voice is in the background of the video taken by Paul’s phone.
That changed everything. What caused it to change everything? It’s an opportunity. Being at the scene of the crime when the murders occurred,” Waters said. In order to expose the defendants lies, we must also expose the important thing he could have told law enforcement. ‘When was the last time I saw my wife and child alive?’ Why in the world would an innocent, reasonable father and husband lie about that, and lie about it so early? He didn’t know that (video) was there.”
It was suggested in the data that the mother and son might have just set their phones down after 8:49, when they were killed. Orientation changes and other movements Maggie’s phone recorded, he said, might have indicated that she was still holding her own phone — or perhaps that a “bad guy” had it.
He pointed out that the testimony of a weapons expert showed that some of the bullets from the Blackout rifle that were found near the body matched other bullets found on the family’s property.
A family was involved in the death of a person. It was present just a couple months prior to the murders and it’s gone now. A family weapon the defendant cannot account for killed Maggie.”
Paul Murdaugh was killed by shots from a shotgun, one of Paul’s “favorite guns,” Waters said. The prosecutor said that investigators determined that two fired shells that killed Paul had “class characteristics” that were similar to a 12-gauge shotgun.
Murdaugh kept a stony face while the verdicts were read. His only other son,Buster Murdaugh, wiped the tears from his eyes. Murdaugh said “I love you” while he was being placed in handcuffs.
The trial featured brutal gore, phone forensics, a mysterious blue tarp and the defendants own lies.
Earlier Thursday, Murdaugh’s defense team delivered closing arguments, saying law enforcement was too quick to pinpoint him as the main suspect in the killings by the dog kennels on the family’s sprawling estate.
“I find it offensive that the defense … is claiming law enforcement didn’t do their job, while he is withholding and obstructing justice by not saying ‘I was down at the kennels.’ ”
The Murdaugh-Newman trial in South Carolina: The case against a man who is an addict, not a crime liar
He said the agency failed to investigate hair found in his wife’s hand, examine footwear and tire impressions, or perform a genetic test on the victims’ clothes.
That is what addicts do. The liars are the addictionists, Griffin said. He lied because he didn’t want to be talked to about the skeletons in his closet.
After deliberations for three hours, jurors decided he was guilty of two counts of murder and two counts of using a weapon during a violent crime. The verdicts were read while Murdaugh did not show any emotion.
“Justice was done today,” prosecutor Creighton Waters said after the verdict. No matter who your family is, it doesn’t matter. It does not matter how much you have or people think you have. It doesn’t matter what you think how prominent you are. If you break the law or murder someone, then justice will be done in South Carolina.
Judge Clifton Newman described the evidence of guilt in the case against Murdaugh as “overwhelming” and denied a request from the defense to declare a mistrial.
The six week trial in South Carolina was the talk of the nation. Media coverage included live broadcasts of the trial itself, true crime podcasts and a docuseries on Netflix.
“That’s what’s true, not what the defense’s trying to get away with,” he said as he told the jury that they needed to focus on the facts of the case. He repeatedly invoked “credibility and common sense.”
SLED fabricated evidence against Alex Murdaugh in the murders of his wife, Molly, and their friend, Maggie, Paul, and Maggie
The prosecutor said that the once influential lawyer lied to his wife and son when he stole millions from his clients and colleagues in order to save himself from financial ruin.
Defense attorney Jim Griffin said law enforcement was biased against Alex Murdaugh from early on — adding that they later fabricated evidence against him. Pulling at threads of the prosecution’s case, Griffin said state investigators “failed miserably in investigating this case.”
If the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division had done a good job of gathering evidence, Murdaugh wouldn’t be on the list of potential suspects.
“unless we find somebody other, it will be Alex,” he said, giving the investigators’ version of what had happened. He said that his client’s opiate habit made him an easy target for SLED. “They started fabricating evidence against Alex.”
SLED took samples from Alex Murdaugh’s clothes, but they never took DNA samples off Maggie and Paul’s clothes, Griffin said. Once investigators seized on the idea that tests showed high-velocity blood spatter on Alex Murdaugh’s T-shirt, he added, they refused to dismiss that idea and pursued it “with vengeance.”
But when the state was faced with mixed results and questions over tests of Murdaugh’s shirt, Griffin said, they embraced a “Mr. Clean theory,” which purported that Murdaugh committed the grisly murders, quickly washed himself off with a hose and got into a golf cart “butt-naked, I guess,” to drive back to the house, before leaving to visit his mother.
He said that the state never told him if the tests that were performed on hair and fingers were done in her hand or not. He also faulted the way Maggie’s phone was secured after it was found on June 8, accusing investigators of not preventing the device from continuously pinging GPS locations — which, he said, eventually overwrote data from the night of the murders.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/03/02/1160581579/alex-murdaugh-murder-trial-verdict
On Murdaugh’s alibi in the kennel episode Columbo: An attorney for a former murder trial prosecutor
The rebuttal closing argument was delivered by a former murder trials prosecutor, who joined the case earlier this year. The jury was asked to look past the lies the trial has exposed, including Murdaugh’s alibi.
The defense’s theory of what happened that night was mocked. If Murdaugh didn’t commit the murders, Meadors said, some unknown attacker or attackers would need to know precisely when he was leaving his wife and son at the dog kennels, and to also know that guns would be there to carry out an execution-style killing.
“This is an episode of Columbo, except this is real,” Meadors said, adding that just like the killers in that TV detective show, Murdaugh made crucial mistakes.
“Paul had a certain amount of insurance on him, and it’s shown in the video, where Alex and Maggie are talking about their dog, who snatched a chicken from him,” said Meadors.
When Murdaugh’s alleged financial crimes put real pressure on him, he showed he loved himself more. And Murdaugh did whatever he needed to protect himself, he added.
Griffin replayed the video Paul took in the kennels around 8:44 p.m., minutes before prosecutors say the shooting started. It captured Alex, Maggie and Paul talking about dogs.
He said that because the phones were locked around 8:49p.m., that doesn’t mean either of them were dead.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/03/02/1160581579/alex-murdaugh-murder-trial-verdict
Murdaugh’s family had nothing to lose: The case of the murder of an ex-girlfriend and a criminal liar
The pressures on his client have been overblown, Griffin said. According to the attorney, when Murdaugh finally felt pressured, he asked his cousin to kill him.
As Thursday’s court session began, Judge Clifton Newman announced that a juror is being replaced on the panel. The court received a complaint from a member of the public saying the juror, a woman identified only as juror No. 785, had “improper conversations” with people not involved with the case.
The woman was thanked for her attention to detail throughout the case and investment of her time. She would be replaced in order for the trial’s integrity to remain intact.
The light went out after the juror left, as she said she needed her purse from the other room and another juror had brought in some eggs for everyone on the panel.
Jurors have gotten a massive amount of information about Murdaugh’s character, from his former law colleagues and clients who said he stole millions of dollars, to the multiple stories about his alibi.
The session began just after 10:00 a.m. The state didn’t have anyone who wanted to give a victim statement, so Newman wouldn’t render his sentence until after that, according to Waters.
“The depravity, the callousness, the selfishness of these crimes are stunning,” Waters said, adding that Murdaugh continued to lie and showed no remorse.
The judge said that he did not question prosecutors’ decision not to seek the death penalty in the case but noted that over the decades in which the family controlled the circuit solicitor’s office, “many have received the death penalty for lesser conduct.”
Newman said that the person might have not been the one who did the terrible acts. Perhaps, he added, Murdaugh’s noted drug addiction caused him to become another person.
Auctions from the Murdaugh Estate: The Moselle House is a Favorite Place for Folks to Come and See Their Homes
Beds, chests, tables, chairs, and picture frames that were once hung on the wall of the Moselle estate are being auctioned. The Murdaugh items will be sold among items from other estates, and each item will be identified by a lot number, according to Mattingly. The auction house did not have an exact number of items being auctioned from the Murdaugh estate.
The house is on a hunting land in South Carolina. The property became a household name during the nationally televised trial of its former occupant, Alex Murdaugh. Murdaugh was found guilty of murdering his wife and son on the property.
The Savannah-based Liberty Auction house was hired to clean out the home and sell all its contents, according to owner Lori Mattingly. She told CNN that the Moselle estate was just like any other job.
“Their things are not any better or nicer than any other things that we pick up from other people’s homes,” Mattingly added. We go into a lot of expensive homes and they have nicer things than we do.
Mattingly said that he had had so many phone calls that he could only answer so many of them. She told CNN that the auctions usually draw about 500 people, but they expect a lot more for this sale.