The investigation of Murdaugh’s connection to the murders of a dog and a mouse in the Los Alamos crime scene

In the last three weeks of the trial, prosecutors have tried to overcome the lack of any direct evidence – such as an eyewitness – tying Murdaugh to the killings. The case was built on circumstantial evidence that shows Murdaugh lied to investigators and was at the scene just moments before the killings.

“You’ll see that video and you’ll hear from witnesses that identify Paul’s voice, Maggie’s voice and Alex’s voice,” Waters said, telling the court Paul was filming a dog that belonged to his friend because they were concerned about the animal’s tail. Murdaugh told anyone who would listen that he was never there. It’s going to be proven that he was there. He was at the murder scene with the two victims” minutes before Paul’s phone “locks forever.”

There could be three different voices in the footage. Dove said that he could tell that the voices were different, because he did not personally know them.

Murdaugh’s first trial revealed that there is no direct evidence for his wife and son murders tying him to their murders

Murdaugh claimed to have seen Paul and Maggie earlier in the evening. He has said that they ate dinner together before Murdaugh took a nap and went to visit his mother. He told authorities that when he came back to the family’s property in Moselle, he discovered the bodies of his wife and son and called 911.

Paul Murdaugh called Gibson the night of the shooting, at 8:40 p.m., to ask if something was wrong with Gibson’s dog, Cash, which was in a kennel 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. Paul Murdaugh promised to send the video of the dog to him if the call didn’t work, but he never received it.

On a day when the court also publicly released body camera videos from law enforcement officers who responded to Alex Murdaugh’s wife and son’s murders, jurors in his murder trial were told about autopsy evidence.

Dick Harpootlian said in his opening statements that the audio showed a normal discussion betweenMurdaugh and his wife. Harpootlian claimed that Paul is very happy. “Nobody’s down there threatening him. Daddy is not pulling out a shotgun and killing him.”

The lines were a preview of what has become clear through three weeks of the trial: There is no direct evidence – no witnesses, no smoking guns, no blood-soaked clothes – tying the disgraced former South Carolina attorney to the murders of his wife, Margaret “Maggie” Murdaugh, and son, Paul Murdaugh.

The home care worker testified that Murdaugh visited his mom for about 20 minutes on the night of the murders. A few days later, they again saw each other and Murdaugh insisted that he had been there 30 to 40 minutes on the night of the murders, she testified.

Dove says that on the night she was murdered, she read two text messages as she talked with her family about Murdaugh’s father.

Waters said in his opening statement last week that Murdaugh had been texting his wife that he wanted to go to his mother’s house in South Carolina.

Evidence from Murdaugh and Wilson during a phone call on June 7, 2021, two days before the murders and the case with the State Attorney’s Office

The display of her phone was turned off a short time later. 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.

Dove said it would appear that the calls were deleted from the log and there was no way to know who was responsible.

Dove said that the only way to remove calls from the log would be to do so manually, and a gap like that would indicate that.

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.

Murdaugh’s lawyers have previously acknowledged he struggles with an opioid addiction and prosecutors presented evidence Friday showing Paul confronted his father about a stash of pills a month before he and his mother were killed.

For one, the chief financial officer of his law firm testified she had confronted Murdaugh about missing funds on the morning of June 7, 2021, hours before the killings. After the murders, the internal investigation into the funds took a backseat.

Wilson also testified he spoke with Murdaugh on the phone at 9:11 p.m., 9:20 p.m. and 9:53 p.m. on June 7, 2021, around the time of the murders. Wilson said that in the short conversations, nothing sounded out of the ordinary.

“They’ve got a whole lot more evidence about financial misconduct than they have about a murder and evidence of guilt in a murder case,” defense lawyer Jim Griffin said in court during a debate on the relevance of this testimony.

He and Murdaugh earned a combined amount of $792,000 from the personal injury case they worked on. Murdaugh asked Wilson to write the check to him personally rather than his law firm, and Wilson did as requested.

Money issues have been the focus of many of the testimony this week. According to the judge overseeing the case, proof that it is connected with the state’s case is essential to complete the story.

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 he learned of the settlement from his family, who heard about it through media reports. He said Murdaugh told him it was still making progress and should be ready to be settled by the end of the year.

The Murdaugh-Tinsley Survivors’ Litigation About a Boat Accident that Leads to Mallory Beach’s Death

Further, the CEO of a local bank testified for the jury that Murdaugh’s account was overdrafted by about $350,000. The total debt of Murdaugh was $4.2 million according to the CEO of the bank.

There was a lawsuit against Murdaugh related to a boat crash that led to the death of 19-year-old Mallory Beach. Murdaugh owned the boat and Paul Murdaugh was allegedly driving it at the time of the accident.

Colleton County Coroner Richard Harvey, the defense’s first witness on Friday, said he estimated Paul and Maggie’s times of death to be around 9 p.m. on June 7, 2021, based on body temperature checks.

On Thursday, the prosecution asked Tinsley about how that lawsuit was proceeding. He testified he was seeking $10 million from Murdaugh, but was told Murdaugh was broke and might only be able to come up with $1 million. Tinsley will be back in the room Friday morning when he will resume his testimony.

The CFO testified that they weren’t going to harassment him about money when they worried about his mental state and family had been killed.

His law firm confronted him about misappropriated funds again and he resigned, along with a murder-for-hire scheme and dozens of financial crimes.

The murder trial of Alex Murdaugh featured testimony from Blanca Turrubiate-Simpson, the wife of Alex Murdaugh’s murderer, in which she explained how her husband was lying in the days before their deaths.

“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 they were asking a lot of money.

Turrubiate-Simpson said that he was told that people were likely going to stop by and bring food. “He said I just want the house to look the way Maggie would like for it to look. So, I said OK and I went to the house.”

The Murdaugh Family Trusted Law in South Carolina, During the News conference on Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2009: A Short Testimony Meeting with Attorneys and Witnesses

Alex Murdaugh is on trial. He has pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder and two weapons charges, with the trial expected to last about two more weeks.

Several Murdaugh relatives were told this week to sit deeper in the South Carolina courtroom due to inappropriate contact and behavior by some of them.

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 book was considered contraband because it was not clear what was in it, the source said, adding Murdaugh was already back in his jail cell with it before anybody 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 have been warned that any more violations will result in them being barred from the courtroom.

Wednesday’s testimony was interrupted when a bomb threat was phoned into the clerk’s office and the courthouse was evacuated, according to Hill. The court resumed several hours later.

Attorneys estimated that the closing arguments could start February 23, about two weeks after the originally scheduled end date.

The state hoped to rest its case by the middle of next week, prosecutor Creighton Waters said, while the defense will need at least a week, defense attorney Dick Harpootlian said, noting it could be on the shorter side because of how long testimony already has lasted.

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.

Harpootlian planned to ask the judge to let jurors visit Moselle, the hunting property where Maggie and Paul Murdaugh were killed, he said in opening statements.

Throughout the trial, prosecutors have tried to place Murdaugh at the scene of the killings shortly before the crime, notably with the help of a video clip authorities say was recorded shortly before the shootings.

In one of the videos, a sheriff’s sergeant is talking. Daniel Greene encounters Murdaugh, who is dressed in a white T-shirt and cargo shorts, outside the property’s kennels. As Green arrives, Murdaugh, standing near the bodies – which are blurred in the video and are situated yards apart – tells him “because of the scene, I did go get a gun and bring it down here.”

The deputy asks where the gun is, and Murdaugh tells him it is leaning against Murdaugh’s vehicle. The deputy checks Murdaugh’s shirt before talking further.

This is not a short story. My son was in a boat wreck months ago. He’s been getting threats,” Murdaugh says. “Most of it’s been benign stuff. We didn’t take serious, you know, he’s been getting like punched. I know it is.

When Greene asked Murdaugh when he was last with the pair, Murdaugh answered, “earlier tonight,” before explaining that at one point that evening he’d left the home to visit his mother, who lived about a 15-minute drive away.

Seeing Murdaugh in a mirror with a gun: a mentally upset person and a shotgun, and then shot himself in the arm

Ellen Riemer, a pathologist at the Medical University of South Carolina, gave graphic testimony about the injuries she had seen in Maggie and Paul’s bodies.

Riemer said that the brain was ejected from him because of the force of the shot. At this testimony, Alex Murdaugh was visibly upset, and grabbed a tissue and wiped his eyes and nose.

Paul was shot twice with a shotgun. The first shot went through part of the left side of his chest and left arm and was not fatal, though it damaged his lung, Riemer testified. The second shot entered through the top of his left shoulder and entered the left side of his neck and head and came out the right side of the top of the head.

“I don’t see anything on his hands that would indicate he had his hands up to his face in anticipation of the injury that was about to happen,” Riemer testified. “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 through the left side of her face and started at her chest. Riemer said she attributed that to the first two shots causing Maggie to double over, with her head bent over. This wound would have been immediately fatal, she said. 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

On the Murdaugh Dynasty: The Jurors, Witnesses and the Coroner Associated with the Killings of Paul and Maggie Murdoch, Jr

The jurors will be tested again on Wednesday. Prosecutors and defense attorneys discussed with the judge postponing the day’s proceedings, but Judge Clifton Newman said jurors would wear masks and “they have a positive attitude.”

The Murdaugh Dynasty has their influence documented on the docuseries ” Low Country: The Murdaugh Dynasty”. CNN will air it on February 19 at 8pm.

Before prosecutors rested their case on Friday, they presented evidence in court showing Paul Murdaugh – son of disgraced South Carolina attorney Alex Murdaugh – confronted his father about pills about one month before both he and his mother were found fatally shot.

Cell phone records show that Murdaugh searched on the internet for a pill on the same day. The description matches a 30 mg Oxycodone Hydrochloride pill. The prosecution said that she deleted her searches for the pills.

Alex Murdaugh sent a text to his wife on the morning of May 7, 2021, apologizing for what he had done. I love you very much.

While the real killings remain at large, the defense has portrayed the defendant as a loving father and husband who called the cops after finding his wife and son and who is now being tried after a poorly handled investigation.

The defense on Friday called to the stand its first two witnesses, including Colleton County Coroner Richard Harvey who said he estimated the time of death for Paul and Maggie to be around 9 p.m. that night, based on armpit checks he conducted. Harvey said yes when asked if they could have been shot at any time during the day or night.

The court heard on Friday from an investigator, who said that Alex Murdaugh called the police seconds after his car was seen near the location where his wife’s phone was later found.

According to Rudofski, who is an investigator with the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, he was able to plot Murdaugh’s movements using latitude, longitude and speed data.

Rudofski testified that while on his way to his mother’s house that night, Murdaugh drove by the spot on the side of the road where Maggie’s cell phone was later recovered by investigators.

Murdaugh turned into the front entrance at the Moselle property at roughly 10 p.m. that night, and shortly after, headed over to the family’s dog kennels located on the property, arriving there at 10:05 p.m., the investigator testified.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/17/us/alex-murdaugh-trial-friday/index.html

A video of Murdaugh looking at a tree, and two of your neighbors did you meet him on the farm that night? (CNN/Newton/Murdaugh)

He stated that when he arrived at the scene he tried to turn Paul over, and tried to check Paul’s phone, before calling for help.

The Attorney General has been prosecuting the case because of the Murdaugh family links to the local solicitors, who served as 14th Circuit Solicitor over 87 years.

The footage played in court Wednesday showed SLED agents confronting Murdaugh about evidence that appeared to contradict his earlier statements to law enforcement.

Owen and Murdaugh both agreed that Rogan has been around your family for a long time. “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 footage played Wednesday showed the agents talking to Murdaugh about a video that Paul filmed of Murdaugh looking at a tree. Murdaugh is wearing pants and a shirt. But later, he was wearing shorts and a white T-shirt.

“There’s a video on Paul’s phone of you and him on the farm that night. You’re wearing khaki pants and a dress shirt … When I met you that night, you were in shorts and a T-shirt,” Owen said. At what time in the evening did you change your clothes?

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/15/us/alex-murdaugh-trial-wednesday/index.html

The Shooting of Murdaugh and Smith to Kill Two People, and a Shot at a Beach Drug Abuse Facility in Islandton

Two witnesses disagree: On Tuesday, Maggie’s sister testified it was Murdaugh who wanted Maggie to come to Moselle. Maggie was staying in the family’s Edisto Beach property and did not want to go to Islandton, Marian Proctor said, recalling a conversation they had the day of the murders.

You weren’t worried about the clothes, that was the reason you didn’t. 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 he had told a county grand jury that an expert found multiple particles of blood spatter on the front of the T-shirt, and it was sent to a lab for testing. The test, however, found no blood on the shirt.

The fact that you had a Hema trace test to confirm that there was no blood was completely overlooked. Wasn’t that overlooked?” asked Griffin.

“Whoever killed Maggie and Paul would likely have biological material on them from the blasts that killed the two victims, right?,” Griffin asked Owen.

The jury also has heard testimony about a roadside shooting that injured Murdaugh in September 2021, months after the killings. Authorities have alleged that Murdaugh arranged for another man to shoot him so that Buster could obtain millions of dollars in life insurance.

A money dispute could have been the reason for the killings, according to the court, with Murdaugh buying 50,000 worth of drugs a week from Smith. Owen testified that he has been told the same.

“Prior to that day, had Alex Murdaugh ever mentioned to you Curtis Edward Smith or anyone else that might have been involved in his son’s or his wife’s murder?” prosecutor John Meadors asked.

Owen was asked if a cell phone analysis had been performed to see if any of the drug gang members were in the area on the night of the killings. But state investigators performed an analysis around Moselle and had identified only first responders as coming to the scene, Owen said.

Owen was told by the defense attorney that a small amount of male DNA had been located under the fingernails of Maggie Murdaugh. Owen said no.

The law says it is not a circumstantial case, so sometimes people think it is, said the prosecutor. Figuring out what’s true is just as good as determining what’s false.

For the defense, that evidence amounts to little more than “speculation” and “conjecture,” attorney Dick Harpootlian argued. They ridiculed the prosecutor’s focus on irrelevant financial misconduct, as well as the fact that Murdaugh had a loving relationship with his family.

Legal experts who followed the trial told CNN that it is certainly not impossible, but that the lack of direct evidence makes it harder to convict.

“It does make the case more difficult,” said trial attorney Misty Marris. If the prosecutors have enough evidence that they can put together that story, it can rise to the level needed for a conviction.

Jurors are looking for science, jurors are also looking for something that is persuasive. Their focus now is on the tenuous motive and the lie after the fact, but neither of those things substitute the evidence that they need.

The trial of Alex Murdaugh, 74, of the deaths of his wife and son, Alex, will begin with an accident reconstructionist

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, there are three different voices in the video and family friends identified them as the voices 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 state prosecutors tried to put forth an explanation for why Murdaugh would kill his family.

The trial of Alex Murdaugh, accused of murder in the deaths of his wife and son, got under way on Tuesday with his attorneys calling his son to testify.

The defense called the first witness of the day,Buster Murdaugh. 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.