A video in the Alex Mudaugh trial shows the investigator asking if he killed his wife and son

Murdaugh and his wife, Gloria, were found dead in the early 1980s after a year-long financial misdeeds by a Florida man

His defense team — and Murdaugh himself, when he took the stand in his own defense — insisted he was innocent, depicting him as a caring father and husband who succumbed to a severe opiate addiction that led him to drain his bank accounts, rack up debt and steal money from his law firm.

People who have worked at Murdaugh’s law firm have said he lied to nearly everyone around him in a years-long fraud. The prosecution argued that he killed his family to distract and delay the financial investigations due to a “day of reckoning” coming from different angles.

Murdaugh, 54, is accused of using a rifle and a shotgun to kill his wife and son. They were found dead at the family’s expansive hunting estate in the South Carolina’s Lowcountry region.

One of the prosecution’s most compelling pieces of evidence is recorded audio that they say places Murdaugh at the crime scene on the night of the murders.

“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 had worked on a personal injury case together and won a verdict of $5.5 million, with each attorney earning about $792,000. Murdaugh asked Wilson to write the check to him personally rather than his law firm, and Wilson did as requested.

The checks played an important role in the discovery of Murdaugh’s misdeeds, according to his coworkers.

The son of Gloria Satterfield testified in court that he was cheated by Murdaugh.

Satterfield testified that he was told of the settlement by his family. 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.

The Murdaugh Case for $10 Million was Not a Day of Recounting, but a Few More Days Before the First Civil Hearing During the 2021 Boating Trial

Further, the CEO of a local bank testified for the jury that Murdaugh’s account was overdrafted by about $350,000. As of August 2021 Murdaugh had a debt to the bank of more than $4 million, according to the CEO of the bank.

At the time of the killings, Murdaugh was facing a lawsuit stemming from a boat crash in February 2019 that killed 19-year-old Mallory Beach. Murdaugh owned the boat and Paul Murdaugh was allegedly driving it at the time of the accident.

On Thursday, the prosecution asked Tinsley about how that lawsuit was proceeding. He testified that he was asking for $10 million from Murdaugh but was told he might only be able to get $1 million. Tinsley was not cross-examined Thursday and is expected to resume his testimony Friday morning.

The CFO testified that they were not going to harass him about money when they were worried about his mental state and his family being killed.

Indeed, that “day of reckoning” didn’t come for another three months, when his law firm again confronted him about misappropriated funds, leading to his resignation, a bizarre murder-for-hire and insurance scam plot, a stint in rehab, dozens of financial crimes, his disbarment and, ultimately, the murder charges.

The defense has said the June 10 civil hearing was not a “day of reckoning” but just one in a series of hearings. Murdaugh faces 99 charges for various financial crimes – but those charges will be adjudicated in a separate case and are unrelated to the murders.

Testimony in recent days similarly undermined statements Murdaugh made to SLED during the August 2021 interview – namely, that Maggie decided to go to Moselle the night of the killings because she was worried about him and his father, whose health was deteriorating.

The Murdaugh-Goettee Trial in Colleton County, Alabama, on Oct. 27, 2005, in the Turrubiate-Simpson System

“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 what the amount of money was.

“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 said okay and then went to the house.

Some Murdaugh relatives were ordered to sit farther back in the courtroom due to inappropriate contact and conduct, the clerk of court in Colleton County 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.

Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly reported whose testimony was underway when Buster Murdaugh allegedly made an obscene gesture; it was Mark Tinsley’s. John Grisham’s book “The Judge’s List” was taken from Alex Murdaugh.

The younger Murdaugh was admonished for the incident, Hill said. Lynn Murdaugh Goettee and Buster Murdaugh have been warned that any more violations will result in them being barred from the courtroom.

The courthouse in Walterboro was evacuated when a bomb threat was phoned into the clerk’s office, Hill said. It resumed hours later.

The trial resumed shortly after 9:30 a.m. Thursday — the day the case is expected to go to the jury, more than a month after the court heard opening statements on Jan. 25.

The state hopes to wrap up its case by the middle of next week, while the defense will need at least one week, according to Dick Harpootlian, a defense attorney.

The length of the prosecution’s case makes it difficult to schedule out-of-state expert witnesses who will require travel and lodging. More than 400 exhibits of evidence have been introduced by the state so far.

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.

The first time the public could see the video was on Monday when Murdaugh placed a call for help at his home on the family’s estate.

Murdaugh, a once-prominent attorney in South Carolina’s Lowcountry, is accused of fatally shooting his wife, Margaret “Maggie” Murdaugh, and son Paul Murdaugh on the family’s expansive hunting estate on June 7, 2021.

The deputy asks where the gun is, and Murdaugh tells him it is leaning against Murdaugh’s vehicle. The deputy is looking at Murdaugh’s shirt.

“This is a long story. My son was in a boat wreck … months back. 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 what 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.

But in court, witnesses identified Murdaugh’s voice in a video taken by Paul at the kennel around 8:45 p.m. – minutes before investigators say the shooting started.

Paul and Maggie Murdaugh: Shooting Paul and Shooting His Son and Daughter with a Blackout Rifle and a Shotgun

Ellen Riemer, a Pathologist at Medical University of South Carolina, testified about the injuries sustained by Paul andMaggie in front of the prosecution.

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 was killed by shots from a shotgun, Waters said. The prosecutor said that investigators found that the shells that killed Paul had class characteristics like a 12-gauge shotgun.

“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 two people who were killed were both killed by a rifle and shotgun, the prosecutor said. Testimony from a weapons expert proved that Blackout rifle bullet casings discovered near Maggie’s body matched casings found on other parts of the family’s property.

The Murdaugh Dynasty in South Carolina: Interview with a Southern Hemisphere Law Enforcement Officer and Interview with the SLED Agents

The remaining jurors were tested Monday and will be tested again Wednesday. The proceedings were supposed to be delayed but the judge said that jurors would wear masks and have a positive attitude.

The family’s influence in South Carolina was documented in the television show “Low Country: The Murdaugh Dynasty”. It airs on CNN Sunday, February 19, at 8 p.m. ET.

Two months before his wife was killed, Margaret “Maggie” Murdaugh had an interview with the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, which was investigating the murders of her husband and son.

The local solicitors case was transferred from them to the Attorney General’s Office because of their long ties with the Murdaugh family.

The SLED agents were confronted by Murdaugh about the evidence that appeared to be against his previous statements to law enforcement.

In his own opening statement, Harpootlian said the audio simply showed Murdaugh and his wife having a “normal discussion” with “no animosity.” Paul is “very happy,” Harpootlian said. “Nobody’s down there threatening him. Daddy is not pulling out a shotgun and killing him.”

“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?”

Why didn’t you change clothes? Alex Murdaugh confessed that he wasn’t worried about the safety of his family, but he had told a grand jury

During cross-examination, defense attorney Jim Griffin noted that investigators had the Snapchat video in July, but did not ask Murdaugh about the whereabouts of the blue shirt and pants he was seen wearing in that footage. Owen testified that he never asked Murdaugh for those clothes.

“There’s a video on Paul’s phone of you and him on the farm that night. You wear khaki pants and a dress shirt, but were wearing shorts and a shirt when I met you, Owen said. “At what point in the evening did you change clothes?”

The woman was not going to see her husband that night since she was enjoying her home in Edisto Beach. Alex Murdaugh’s father and mother were dying, but Alex’s sister was encouraged to support him.

“And the reason you didn’t, (was because) you weren’t concerned about those clothes. The investigation was focused on the shirt, shorts and shoes he was wearing at the time he called for help.

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.

When you did a HemaTrace test to confirm whether there was blood, it came up negative. Was that not considered? 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.

The property of Murdaugh’s mother in Almeda was not searched for months after the killings. No weapons were found on that property, Owen testified.

In the months following the killings, the jury heard about a roadside shooting that hurt Murdaugh. Murdaugh arranged for another man to shoot him so that he could get millions of dollars in life insurance.

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.

Before the day that Alex Murdaugh was indicted for the murder of his son and his wife, did he ever mention to you anyone else who might have been involved?

Asked if a cell phone analysis had been performed to see if any of the drug gang members were in the area the night of the killings, Owen said drug gang members typically use burner phones, and he didn’t have their phone numbers. First responders were identified as being at the scene by investigators, according to Owen.

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 day after the defense team rested their case, prosecutors plan to call some rebuttal witnesses before the jury comes to Alex Murdaugh’s estate where his wife and son were killed.

The defense has argued that Murdaugh was wrongly accused, because of a poorly handled investigation. His first day of testimony, here are a few key moments.

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.

The case is more difficult with it. “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.

“JURY wants science, they want the evidence and they want something that is persuasive,” she said. “But because (prosecutors) lack it … their focus is now on the tenuous motive and the lies after the fact, but neither of those things … substitute the evidence that they need.”

The murder of Paul and Maggie Murdaugh, 28, in Islandton, Colleton, on June 7, 2021, was recorded on Paul and David Dove’s phone

A Snapchat video, just short of a minute long, was filmed on Paul’s phone starting at 8:44 p.m. on June 7, 2021, just minutes before Paul and Maggie were shot dead, according to Lt. David Dove is a supervisor in the computer crimes center.

A video appears to have been captured at their family home in Islandton and focuses on one of their dogs. Family friends identified the voices in the background as those of Paul and Alex Murdaugh, when they heard the footage.

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.

Alex Murdaugh was back on the stand Friday for more questioning about the deaths of his wife and son.

The defense called Buster Murdaugh as their first witness. 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.

He told investigators that after he returned to his house, he found the bodies of his wife and son by their dog yard and called the police.

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.

The video was recorded by Paul and shows one of the family dogs being taken from the house. The supervisor in the computer crimes center was David Dove.

Paul Murdaugh, the Killing of the 17-Year-Old Family, and the Boat Accident That Killed his Mother

Although the title “Murdaugh Murders” ostensibly references the killing of Paul Murdaugh and his mother, Maggie, which resulted in his father and her husband, Alex, being put on trial, that’s something of an afterthought in the way the episodes are constructed. The focus of the first two parts is the boat crash.

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.

A lot was said about the Murdaugh family’s influence over the authorities to protect Paul, and how he often drank excessively and drove the boat.

Gloria Satterfield, the nanny who died after being injured by the family dog, was not the first to be involved in a suspicious event that the Murdaughs escaped scrutiny for.

Still, Murdaugh was emphatic in his denial that he shot and killed his wife and son, insisting in response to Griffin’s questions, “I didn’t shoot my wife or my son, anytime, ever.”

In his closing argument, Waters stressed to jurors that he thinks one thing was missing from the two days Murdaugh spent testifying. If the new alibi is true, Waters asked, why hadn’t Murdaugh voiced any regret that he didn’t remain at the kennel, to potentially protect his wife and child?

Murdaugh told the court that on his way back from his mother’s house, he tried to call his wife twice, but she did not answer. He said he also left her a text. However, he said he did not find her non-response unusual, because she was with Paul and because of sometimes-spotty cell service.

The resignation of Murdaugh from his law firm and the creation of the Parker Law Group came about because he admitted to stealing from his clients.

“I admit, candidly, in all of these cases, Mr. Waters, that I took money that was not mine, and I shouldn’t have done it,” Murdaugh said in response to prosecutor Creighton Waters during the prosecution’s cross-examination.

The Murdaugh Effect in Islandton, Massachusetts, During the September 2021 Shooting of a Man with a Pill Addiction

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.

“I don’t know why I tried to turn him over,” an emotional Murdaugh said. “I mean, my boy’s laying face down. He is the way he is done. His head was not different from the way he was. I could see his brain laying on the sidewalk. I did not know what to do.

Waters wanted to poke holes in the account of his whereabouts, as a result of cell phone data and other evidence from the night of the killings.

Murdaugh said he had a pill addiction for roughly two decades but was able to maintain his legal practice and was “certain none of my partners knew I had an addiction.”

Murdaugh explained how in September 2021, two months after the killings, he decided to ask a man who he was initially intending to get pills from to instead shoot him.

Murdaugh’s murder trial was adjourned for a Friday afternoon hearing after a three-hour interview with Waters

The court adjourned on Friday for the weekend after six hours of testimony, during which the former attorney was grilled about his lies, drug use and details of the gruesome case.

“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?”

Waters wanted to know if the dogs at the kennels on Murdaugh’s property barked when he was there with his wife and son.

I know what I was not doing, but I think you said it was stuff like washing off guns or putting guns in a raincoat. And I can promise you that I wasn’t doing any of that,” Murdaugh said.

He stated that he never made an alibi because he did not hurt his wife or child. I have never created an alibi, that’s for sure.

“I can tell you for a fact that the person or people who did what I saw on June 7, they hated Paul Murdaugh,” he testified. “And they had anger in their heart.”

Waters focused on financial crimes that the state alleges drove Murdaugh to murder, asking a former lawyer if clients he stole from are real people.

After Waters finished his cross examination, Murdaugh’s defense attorney started questioning him after a brief break. The court was adjourned for the day after the questioning was over.

Why did Paul Murdaugh lie to the police? A lawyer’s viewpoint on a case of “murmurdaugh lying to the cops”

They are real people. They’re good people. Murdaugh said that he did wrong by a lot of the people he cared about.

“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.”

On September 4, 2021, nearly three months after the killings, Murdaugh reported he was shot alongside a road and was treated for a “superficial gunshot wound to the head,” authorities said.

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.

Even though Paul was charged with manslaughter in a fatal boat accident, Murdaugh was focused on another case. It struck her as odd.

Legal experts told CNN that having Murdaugh testify was a bold move that would be risky for the defense. Many attorneys don’t put their clients on the stand because it’s hard to predict what questions prosecutors will ask and how the jury will view the accused, experts say, but Murdaugh was the prime suspect for the job.

“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. “And all it takes is one juror to connect with him emotionally.”

Finally, Murdaugh was able to use his decades of experience as an attorney to control the narrative when he was questioned by prosecutors, experts said. During those lines of questioning, prosecutors want to elicit only “Yes” or “No” responses from a person, according to legal experts. But Murdaugh continuously gave long explanations when responding. He was able to look sympathetic to the jurors and potentially humanize himself in that way.

“They convicted him with conviction,” criminal defense attorney Sara Azari said. “I really thought there was going to be somewhat of a struggle in this jury room. I believe they could not get past the lie about the video.

A key factor will be whether Murdaugh could convince at least one person on the jury that he was not guilty and that he could be spared the rest of his life behind bars.

They are trying to use it to show that he had a problem with addiction, that he sympathized with it, and that he was paranoid about the police because he lied to them about not being there.

If he was suffering from a drug problem, he might have been acting irrationally and the jury would think that he killed his family. “So, it’s a double-edged sword.”

“What they’re doing, the prosecutors, is saying he’s a liar, he’s a cheat, he can’t be trusted and you should not at all take whatever he says at face value,” criminal defense attorney and CNN Legal Analyst Joey Jackson said.

Murdaugh’s case in the trial: a two-shooter shooter and a model witness in Islandton, South Carolina,

In many ways, Murdaugh was a model witness, experts said. He looked straight at jurors when he spoke, and grew visibly emotional talking about his slain wife and son, often referring to them by endearing nicknames. He called his son Paul-Paul and wife Mags, when he was testifying.

One of the main issues for the prosecution in this trial will be whether or not he really committed the crime, according to a law professor. “Despite all the other crimes he’s admitted to, would he actually kill his wife and son?

The defense hired a former professor of forensic science at the University of New Haven to review the case and analyze the crime scene.

He explained that Paul and Margaret were both shot with a shotgun and that it was a two-shooter theory. He found that Paul’s shooting was from a very close range and that the shooter would have been temporarily stunned by the violence.

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 prosecution has 61 witnesses over three weeks of testimony and will seek rebuttal testimony on Tuesday. The jury will be allowed to visit the family’s estate after rebuttal witnesses, but before the closing arguments.

Moselle Murdaugh, 52, and John Marvin: What Happened When Moselle and Isked About the Morse?

Despite the large and complex crime scene, state law enforcement released Moselle back to the family on the morning after the murders, according to Murdaugh’s brother, John Marvin. He told a story about how to clean up parts of Paul’s remains.

“It had not been cleaned up. He testified through tears and said he saw blood, brains, and pieces of skull. “For some reason I thought it was something that I needed to do for Paul to clean it up. It felt like it was the right thing to do. I started cleaning after feeling like I owed him. I promise you don’t have to watch or do what I did that day.

The defense has also tried to portray the investigation into the case as shoddy, arguing that the crime scene was not secure or handled carefully. One witness testified that there were no barricades or police tape used to prevent visitors from entering the property on the night of the killings.

They tried to prove that he was not at the scene of the crime, lied to investigators, and painted a picture of a fraudster who killed his wife and son to distract from his actions.

That shooting was followed by a stint in rehab for drug addiction, dozens of allegations of financial crimes, his disbarment and, ultimately, the murder charges.

Mark Murdaugh, Jr., is not going to lie to anyone if he is guilty of rigor mortis, prosecutor Waters

The state plans to call four or five witnesses to testify on issues raised by the defense, and hopes to finish with all of them by the end of the Tuesday, prosecutor Creighton Waters said.

Murdaugh told the jury that he would hurt himself and not hurt one of them if he were in that situation.

More than a week ago, Colleton County Coroner Richard Harvey testified that he estimated the time of death to be around 9 p.m. – just minutes after Murdaugh’s voice was captured on the video – based in part on armpit checks he conducted to feel how warm the bodies were.

Harvey testified that rigor mortis had not yet set in, and that it typically starts developing one to three hours following death.

A forensic pathologist, Jonathan Eisenstat, testified Monday that armpit temperature checks are “just not a valid method to try to make a determination of time of death,” calling the technique “just a guess.”

Instead, he said, someone arriving on scene should first check the ambient temperature of the area where the body is found and then take a rectal temperature to get as close to a core body temperature as possible.

Harvey said he didn’t take rectal temperatures that night. During cross examination, prosecutors asked if the coroner had an idea of when the killings occurred since he did not take exact temperatures.

Everyone thought they were close to him, Waters said. They paid for it when he fooled them as well. Don’t allow him to fool you as well.

He began to steal because the millions of dollars in legal fees he was receiving was not enough and he became addicted to money, Waters said.

Witnesses and Detectors in Waters’s Forensics for the Moselle Ahomicides: When a “Family Weapon” was Used

Waters used phone forensics to reconstruct the prosecution’s version of events prior to and after the murders at Moselle.

That made a lot of things different. Why did it change everything? There is an opportunity. Being at the scene of the crime when the murders occurred,” Waters said. “More importantly, exposing the defendant’s lies about the most 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.”

A friend of Paul’s testified for the prosecution that he and Paul shot the.300 Blackout rifle a month or two before the murders. The gun, which has not been located, had recently been at Moselle, Meadors said.

The prosecutors say that a ” family weapon” was used to kill her. They never produced the murder weapon, which was a.300 Blackout assault-style rifle and a 12-gauge shotgun.

The Murdaugh shootings at the Moselle estate and his wife’s hunting estate: Paul and Maggie left the hunting estate in June 2017, a month after the murders

He said that he was paranoid and distrusted state investigators as police put a needle in his hand and asked about his relationships with his family.

“You still told the same lie, and all those reasons that you just gave this jury about the most important part of your testimony was a lie too,” Waters said.

His defense team has sought to sow doubt about the work by police and forensics teams, saying they fell far short of preserving evidence from the crime scene and the hunting estate’s main house.

Vehicles and people were allowed onto the Moselle grounds in the hours after the killings. And on a night with misting rain and drizzle, Paul and Maggie’s bodies were covered by sheets rather than tarps.

Ball said his group was told to go inside the main house despite his concern that it could be related to the crime scene. Some of them tidied up the house, he said.

“Murdaugh said his top goal was clearing Paul’s name, and I broke down in tears,” she said. I thought it was weird because my main goal was to find out who killed my sister and Paul.

The Murdaughs originally had two custom Blackout rifles, given to Paul and his brother, Buster, as Christmas presents. Paul’s was stolen in 2017 and a replacement gun was purchased, but the newer one has not been found.

The idea that Murdaugh was too tall to have fired the shots that killed Paul was rejected by prosecutors, because of numerous variables such as the likely chaos at the scene and the potential of firing from a kneeling position.

Kinsey told Wilson that the defense’s theory that the shooter had to be shorter than Murdaugh’s frame wasn’t true.

The outfit matches the testimony from the servant, Turrubiate-Simpson, who remembered fixing Murdaugh’s collar. She also told jurors about a conversation with her employer two months after the murders.

He had a phone that was immobile at the main house early in the evening of June 7. The cellphone data shows a rush of activity, with Murdaugh taking 283 steps in four minutes. The murders took place immediately after that.

“What were you so busy doing?” Murdaugh asked Waters, the prosecutor. The accused man didn’t give details, saying only that he was getting ready to visit his mother, who has Alzheimer’s.

According to vehicle records, Murdaugh went up to 80 mph on the rural roads, far exceeding the posted speed limits. He passed by the spot on the roadside where the phone was found.

Smith said that she hadn’t seen Murdaugh at his parents’ home in the morning. But, she said, that’s what he did one day shortly after the shootings, carrying what looked like a blue vinyl tarp that was bundled up as if something was inside.

Murdaugh denied doing that. It was found that the blue raincoat was wrapped around a recently fired weapon, leading to speculation that it had been used in the shooting.

Annette said that Murdaugh was a devil, who was late for work and all over the place. The first person to discover missing settlement fees was Griswold. Griswold said she initially assumed Murdaugh had misplaced them. She told the firm’s chief financial officer of her suspicions.

Seckinger, who has known Murdaugh since high school, said that when she went to confront him about the missing money on June 7, he shot her a dirty look that she’d never seen before, asking, “What do you need now?”

Maggie and Paul were killed that night, and sympathy and consideration for Murdaugh’s loss outweighed concerns about the missing funds, Seckinger and Griswold said.

Months after the murders, Griswold testified, she was getting a file in her boss’s office when a check “floated like a feather to the ground,” revealing he was siphoning money. She said it hit her hard, adding: “I was beside myself.” He had been lying the whole time.

Legal experts who have participated in a lot of America’s high-profile cases will be on CNN Wednesday night to look at some of the key questions surrounding the murder trial of Alex Murdaugh.

“It comes down to two things that every single prosecutor has to contend with. CNN senior legal analyst Laura Coates spoke to a panel about motivation and opportunity. Here are key takeaways from the legal experts’ discussion of the case:

Hatchett said that he thinks a credibility gap was created by the fact that he waited until there was testimony from multiple people, and then said that he was paranoid.

Hatchett was a former chief presiding juvenile court judge in Georgia and believes that if you have a credibility gap, it can taint other testimony.

Mark O’Mara, the criminal defense lawyer who defended the man who shot and killed Trayvon Martin, said the prosecution had to exclude every alibi in order to get a conviction.

“I think this kennel video is the most important piece of evidence in this case for the prosecution because it explodes the big lie,” said Loni Coombs, a former Los Angeles County prosecutor. “I’m talking about the big lie of his alibi, where he (initially) said, ‘I was not there at the crime scene.’”

A case of “improper conversations” between a woman and a juror in a drug-related addiction trial, which was closed on Oct. 24

Patients start at 10 to 20 percent of their normal daily dose a few times a day, Gupta said. While 2,000 milligrams sound astronomical in comparison, taking that much daily is possible, he said.

People are able to increase their tolerance to these drugs. Gupta said that this was not uncommon. “Over time, people can increasingly escalate the dose.” It is difficult to determine the impact of addiction on a specific person.

Murdaugh, who says he is now drug-free, testified he took the high doses in part to avoid the symptoms of withdrawal, which can include vomiting, dizziness, depression and confusion.

Gupta stated that people can begin to develop tolerance to the point where they are no longer taking the medication to get high, to develop euphoria but rather just to feel normal.

The prosecution will respond after the defense presents its closing argument. The jury are expected to come to a verdict after Judge Newman gives his final instructions.

A juror is being replaced during the court session on Thursday. 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.

Newman thanked the woman for her attentive and positive attitude throughout the case, and the investment of her time. She would be replaced to make sure that the trial remained intact.

A light moment then erupted shortly before the juror left, as she said she needed her purse from the other room — along with a dozen eggs that another juror had brought in for everyone on the panel.

Murdaugh, the dog killer, and the drug dealer were too quick to tell him he wasn’t a kennel

The defense team for Murdaugh argued that law enforcement was too quick to make him the main suspect in the killings of dogs on the family’s estate.

Murdaugh did not smile while the verdicts were read. His only son, who was still alive, wiped tears from his eyes. Murdaugh said, “I love you” when he was arrested and placed in handcuffs.

“I was shocked that the verdict came back so quickly, with all of the witnesses – 70 witnesses of the three-week trial – there was so much to parse through,” trial attorney and legal analyst Misty Marris told CNN’s Erin Burnett.

“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.’ ”

He claimed the agency failed to investigate hair found in Murdaugh’s wife’s hand, or take fingerprints, examine footwear and tire impressions, or perform genetic testing on victims’ clothes.

That is what addicted people do. The drug traffickers lie,Griffin said. He did not want to be scrutinized anymore because he had a lot of skeletons in his closet.

A Seven-Week News Conference on Murdaugh and the Case for a Murmurmurdaugh Charged With a Violent Crime

Jurors deliberated for about three hours before convicting him on two counts of murder and two counts of using a weapon during the commission of a violent crime. Murdaugh showed little emotion as the verdicts were read.

The lead prosecutor said at the news conference that justice had been done. It does not matter who your family is. The people think you have more money than you do. It doesn’t matter what you are famous for.

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 judge’s comments concluded the six-week trial, which captivated South Carolina — and the nation. Media coverage included live broadcasts of the trial itself, true crime podcasts and a docuseries on Netflix.

The once influential lawyer lied to his wife and son when he stole millions of dollars from clients and colleagues in desperation, and also lied to those close to him when he killed them, prosecutors said.

Murdaugh would not have been included in the list of potential suspects if the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division had done a better job of gathering evidence.

Alex Murdaugh vs. Maggie, Paul, and Meadors: A jury verdict on the murders of two people in a golf cart

The victims of Alex want complete accountability, he said. The jury verdict began complete accountability here today.

Alex Murdaugh’s clothes were taken by SLED, but they never took samples of Paul or Maggie’s clothes. 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.”

They embraced a “Mr. Clean theory” that claimed that Murdaugh killed several people and washed himself off in a golf cart.

He said that the state never explained if the tests on hair were done at all, or if it was found in the girl’s fingers. He criticized the way that Maggie’s phone was secured after its discovery, accusing investigators of not preventing the device from continuously pinging locations, which led to him overwriting data from the night of the murders.

“That’s what’s real,” Meadors repeated as he urged the jury to focus on the facts of the case, not what he deemed the defense’s efforts to undermine them. He repeatedly invoked “credibility and common sense.”

“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.

In the video,Maggie and Alex are talking about their dog and he tried to steal a chicken from them outside. Paul had insurance on him.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/03/02/1160581579/alex-murdaugh-murder-trial-verdict

Murdaugh’s Trial: The Story of an Attorney Who Killed His Slain Wife During the September Shooting of his Mother, His Cousin

When Murdaugh was accused of financial crimes, he showed that he loved himself more. And Murdaugh did whatever he needed to protect himself, he added.

He also sought to sow doubt about investigators’ findings of the time of death, saying that just because Paul’s and Maggie’s phones locked around 8:49 p.m., that doesn’t mean both of them were dead.

The pressures on his client have been overblown, Griffin said. When Murdaugh did finally feel pressure, the attorney added, he took steps to end his own life in September, asking his cousin to shoot him.

The trial was compared to the instant replay review in college football by the statement given by the man who talked about it. Despite the charges against Murdaugh, he told jurors, the call on the field — the default position of the law — is that Murdaugh is innocent. It’s the prosecution’s job, he added, to prove Murdaugh’s guilt beyond reasonable doubt.

Judge Clifton Newman spoke about Alex Murdaugh’s lies during the investigation, saying that his slain wife and son must “come and visit” while he is trying to fall asleep, to which Murdaugh responded that he sees them “all day and every night.”

You gave a good expression on the witness stand. ‘Oh, what tangled web we weave.’ Murdaugh said that he meant that when he lied, he continued to lie.

“And the question is when will it end?” Newman said. When will it come to an end? This ended already for the jury because they’ve concluded that you continued to lie and lie throughout your testimony.”

Seeing Murdaugh in Court: The Death of a Disgraced Attorney Without Perpetuation for the Crimes of His Husband and Son

Alex Murdaugh was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole Friday for the murders of his wife and grown son – another chapter in the downfall of the disgraced attorney whose dynastic family had significant legal reach for decades in parts of South Carolina’s Lowcountry.

“Amazingly to have you come and testify that it was just another ordinary day. ‘My wife and son and I were out just enjoying life.’ That is not credible. Not believable. You can convince yourself about it But obviously you can’t convince anyone else about that, said Judge Newman before handing down two consecutive life sentences.

You have to see Paul and Maggie when you try to sleep during the night. At one point in the courtroom, the judge said that he was sure they would come and visit Murdaugh.

The court session started at 10:30 a.m. Even though Newman had said that he would give his sentence after any victim impact statements, the prosecutor said that the state didn’t have anyone who wanted to deliver a statement.

While I sit here in this courtroom and look at the many portraits of judges and other court officials and reflect on the fact that over the past century your family has been prosecuting people here in this courtroom, many have received the death penalty for lesser conduct.

Paul Murdaugh, the Victim of his Crimes, a Step Towards Justice, and his Former Law Firm, Parker Law Group

Murdaugh was put in the custody of the South Carolina Department ofCorrections. A law enforcement official watch him leave the courtroom while he wore a brown jumpsuit and handcuffs.

The jury began its deliberations with a vote: “It was two not guilty, one not sure and nine guilty,” he said Friday, adding his vote was guilty from the start.

In the end, “it was the victim, Paul Murdaugh, who solved his own murder,” Dave Aronberg, state attorney for Florida’s Palm Beach County, told CNN Thursday night about the trial.

Murdaugh’s former law firm – which renamed itself Parker Law Group in light of his actions – called Thursday’s verdict a step toward justice. There were several people from the law group that testified during the trial.

The one thing we can take away from this is that he had been lying to a lot of people, and so he had got to be pretty good at it.

“If he went in there and they believed him, then he would have likely been found not guilty. It is a difficult hill to get over if they think that he is willing to put himself out there and not be believed.

“I truly think that the jury recognized this man lied to everybody,” including clients, and that the jury concluded he was lying to them also, he told CNN.

Waters said the crimes are stunning and that Murdaugh kept lying and showed no remorse.

The judge said he didn’t question prosecutors’ decision not to seek the death penalty in the case — but he noted that over the decades in which Murdaugh’s family controlled the circuit solicitor’s office, “many have received the death penalty — probably for lesser conduct.”

“It might not have been you,” Newman told Murdaugh of the person who committed the terrible acts. He believes that Murdaugh’s drug addiction may have caused him to become another person.