Alex Murdaugh is on trial for murder

Murdaugh and Satterfield admitted to lying about his murders, but they did not expose their motives or hide their guilt – a prosecutor’s attorney testified

Murdaugh admitted to lying, but his lawyer said that “that’s what addicts do.” He added that Murdaugh had “a closet full of skeletons” that he didn’t want exposed.

Waters presented a decade-long chronology of Murdaugh’s financial fraud that came to a head on the night of the killings.

The 54-year-old took the stand in his own defense. He was found guilty of using a rifle to kill his wife, Maggie Murdaugh, 52, and a shotgun to kill his son Paul, 22. The couple passed away on the evening of June 7, 2016 at the family’s hunting estate in South Carolina.

However, there is effectively no direct evidence – no witnesses, no murder weapon, no DNA and no ballistics – that link Murdaugh to the murders. Prosecutors have instead offered circumstantial evidence, such as the gunshot primer damage on Murdaugh’s clothes and the financial motive.

“They’ve got a whole lot more evidence about financial misconduct than they do about evidence of guilt in a murder case. “This is all about that,” defense lawyer Jim Griffin said last week.

Murdaugh later asked Wilson to rewrite the check and make it out to the law firm, he testified. Murdaugh wired him back $600,000 but said he didn’t have the full funds, so Wilson had to spend $192,000 of his own money to cover the difference, he said.

The checks ultimately played a key role in Murdaugh’s law firm’s discovery that he had been misappropriating funds, according to testimony from his coworkers.

Michael Satterfield testified Thursday that he was defrauded by Murdaugh.

Satterfield testified that he learned of the settlement from his family, who heard about it 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.

Murdaugh’s Day of Re reckoning in the South Carolina Anatomy of a Murmurdaugh Trial: A Letter to Tinsley

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 total debt to the bank of $4.2 million, according to Palmetto State Bank CEO Jan Malinowski.

The deaths of Paul Murdaugh’s wife and son were in addition to Gloria Satterfield’s death, which was blamed on a boat driven by Murdaugh.

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 was not cross-examined Thursday and is expected to resume his testimony 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.

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.

Murdaugh was a partner at a powerful law firm with his name on it. His downfall began with the killings of his wife and son, and was followed by accusations of misappropriated funds, an alleged suicide-for-hire scam, a stint in rehab for drug addiction, dozens of financial crimes, and his disbarment.

Earlier in the day, Murdaugh’s defense team made its final bid to prevent him from spending decades in prison, delivering their closing argument in the trial of the disbarred South Carolina attorney charged in the murders of his wife and son.

He claimed that his paranoia was a factor in his decision to lie to police and that he had a pocket full of money. The police interview was played for the prosecution.

Alibi: Murdaugh denied that he was trying to manufacture an alibi when asked about the series of phone calls, some of them to Maggie Murdaugh, after she and her son were killed. Waters was asking about what he was doing for a period of about four minutes before he left to go to his mom’s house.

Waters said that Murdaugh had the means to commit the murders, in particular the weapons. Waters said that Paul and Maggie both died from a shotgun and a Blackout rifle.

The pill addiction is related. In the months leading up to his wife and son’s deaths, Murdaugh said he took more than 2,000 m2 of the drug per day.

Paul Murdaugh, a father-of-two, who stole from a family gun, and killed his son, Paul, in Moselle, Alabama

“This defendant has fooled everyone — everyone who thought they were close to him,” Waters told the jury in his closing argument. “He fooled Maggie and Paul, too, and they paid for it with their lives. Don’t let him fool you, too.”

According to evidence you have heard, the defendant became addicted to money and dependent on it, so he started to steal and the million of dollars in legal fees wasn’t enough.

The prosecution’s version of events prior to and after the murders at Moselle was reconstructed by Waters.

Murdaugh had long denied that he went to the kennels that night, but a video taken by Paul’s phone at 8:44 p.m. includes audio of Murdaugh’s voice in the background.

Everything changed when that happened. Why did it change the whole thing? There is opportunity. Waters said that he was at the crime scene when the murders occurred. The most important thing he could have told law enforcement would have been exposed if he had lied. When was the last time I saw my spouse and child? Why would an innocent father and husband lie about something they know nothing about? He did not know that video was there.

The prosecutor said that the phones of Paul andMaggie were last used at 8:49PM, and that they both took a lot of steps minutes later. Waters claimed that this proved Murdaugh shot his son, and then killed his wife, as well as that the woman heard the shot, ran to the scene, and was shot dead by her husband.

The witness said that the bullets that were found near the body of her sister were from the shotgun that had been used to kill her.

“A family Blackout killed Maggie. 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 the shells used to kill Paul were similar to a 12-gauge shotgun.

Murdaugh kept a stony face while the verdicts were read. His only remaining son, Buster Murdaugh, could be seen wiping tears from his eyes. Murdaugh appeared to mouth “I love you” to Buster as he was being placed in handcuffs.

The trial attorney and legal analyst told CNN that she was surprised that the verdict came back so quickly.

One week after Murdaugh took the stand, he admitted to lying repeatedly to investigators when he said he was at the dog kennel with his family when they died.

I find that offensive, as the defense is saying that law enforcement didn’t do their job, and that he is blocking justice by not saying that he was down at the kennels.

A jury verdict in the Murdaugh-Raifeartah case ruled that murder and murder was a crime committed in South Carolina

He said the agency failed to investigate hair found in Murdaugh’s wife’s hand, take fingerprint evidence, examine footwear and tire impressions, or test DNA on the victims’ clothes.

“Because that’s what addicts do. Addicts lie,” Griffin said. “He lied because he had a closet full of skeletons, and he didn’t want any more scrutiny on him.”

He was found guilty of two counts of murder and two counts of using a weapon during the commission of a violent crime after jurors deliberated for three hours. Murdaugh showed no emotion when the verdicts were read.

“Justice was done”, prosecutor Waters said after the verdict. “It doesn’t matter who your family is. Whether or not you have enough money to live doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what you think how prominent you are. If you do wrong, if you break the law, if you murder, then justice will be done in South Carolina.”

The evidence in the case against Murdaugh was “overwhelming” according to the judge and the defense was not allowed to declare a mistrial.

The judge’s comments concluded the six-week trial which riveted South Carolina and the nation. There were live broadcasts of the trial, as well as true crime podcasts and docuseries on the internet.

“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 mentioned trustworthiness and common sense many times.

The trial of a convicted murderer, Alex Murdaugh, prosecuted with the Southern Illinois Integrated Crime Detector (SLED)

Prosecutors said the once influential lawyer lied to those close to him when he stole millions of dollars from his colleagues and clients and — in an act of desperation, as his financial pressures were mounting — fooled his wife and son, too, when he killed them.

A comparison of the trial to an instant play review in a college football game was the topic of the beginning of the statement from the man. The call on the field is that Murdaugh is not guilty despite the charges against him. He added that the prosecution’s job is to prove Murdaugh’s guilt beyond reasonable doubt.

If the SLED had done a good job of gathering evidence, Murdaugh wouldn’t have been included on the list of potential suspects.

“unless we find someone else, it is Alex,” said Griffin, giving investigators’ idea of the situation. Saying his client’s opioid habit made him “an easy target for SLED,” Griffin added. The evidence against Alex began to be fabricated.

SLED took samples from Alex Murdaugh’s clothes, but they never took DNA samples off Maggie and Paul’s clothes, Griffin said. The idea that Alex Murdaugh’s T-shirt had high-velocity blood spatter became a priority for investigators and they 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.

Griffin accused the agency of a list of failures, saying the state never explained if tests were performed on hair he said was found in Maggie’s fingers. He faulted the way investigators secured her phone after it was recovered, and he also accused them of overwriting data from the night of the murders.

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

Alex Murdaugh’s death sentence in Columbo, except that this is real: A rebuttal to the trial’s closing argument

Prosecutor John Meadors — a veteran of murder trials, who emerged from retirement to join the state’s case earlier this year — delivered the rebuttal closing argument. The 12 jurors were told to disregard the lies the trial has exposed, in a speech that was rife with dramatic flair.

Meadors also mocked the defense’s theory of what happened that night. The unknown attacker or attackers would need to be aware of the location of Murdaugh and his wife and son and also that guns would be present to kill them, if Murdaugh didn’t commit the murders.

“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 that insurance on him,” Meadors said of the video, in which Maggie and Alex are heard talking about their dog, Bubba, who snatched a chicken in his mouth near the kennels.

When Murdaugh was accused of financial crimes he showed how much he loved himself by showing that 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. The three of them talked about dogs.

He said that the time of death found by investigators doesn’t mean that both of the people were dead.

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

The trial of a man who killed himself, accused of murdering his wife and killing himself: A juror in Murdaugh’s case

The pressures on his client have been overblown, Griffin said. When Murdaugh began to feel pressure, he took steps to end his own life, asking his cousin to shoot him.

As Thursday’s court session began, Judge Clifton Newman announced that a juror is being replaced on the panel. A woman who was a juror was reprimanded by the court after they received a complaint that she had talked to people who were not involved in the case.

Newman thanked the woman for her attentive and positive attitude throughout the case, and the investment of her time. But, he said, she would be replaced so that the integrity of the trial would remain intact.

The juror had brought in a dozen eggs and a purse for everyone on the panel, but she wanted her purse back from the other room.

Murdaugh’s former law colleagues have given jurors a lot of information about his character, and multiple stories have been told about his alibi.

The court session started after 10:00 a.m. After any victim impact statements, Newman said he would render his sentence, but the state did not have anyone who wanted to deliver a victim statement.

“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 didn’t question prosecutors’ decision not to seek the death penalty in the case, but he pointed out that over the decades in which his family had control of the office, a lot have received the death penalty.

“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.

The Liberty Auction House of Murdaugh’s Hunting Property, Colleton County, South Carolina, in Light of CNN’s X Factor Report

The beds, chests, tables, chairs, and picture frames that once hung on the walls 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 didn’t have an exact number of items that would be auctioned.

The house is located in Colleton County, South Carolina, on a hunting property called Moselle. The property became a household name during the nationally televised trial of its former occupant, Alex Murdaugh. Murdaugh was found guilty of shooting and killing his wife and son.

The Savannah-based Liberty Auction house was hired to clean out the home and sell all its contents, according to owner Lori Mattingly. Cleaning out the Moselle estate was “just like any other job,” she said to CNN over the phone on Tuesday.

There are better and nicer things we pick up from other people’s homes, according to Mattingly. “We go into a lot of very nice expensive homes … And we’ve had much nicer things than theirs, but their things are nice.”

“It’s unbelievable how many phone calls I have had, and I have only been able to answer so many,” said Mattingly. She told CNN that the auctions usually draw a few hundred people, but they expect many more to come for this sale.