Prosecutors lay out evidence against Alex Murdaugh in grisly murders of his wife and son

New York Daily News, The (NY)

The murder case against infamous South Carolina attorney Alex Murdaugh was laid out for the first time in court Wednesday.

Murdaugh, 54, is accused of killing his wife, Maggie, and his son Paul in June 2021 at their home in lowcountry South Carolina.

“It’s complicated. It’s a journey. There’s a lot of aspects to this case,” prosecutor Creighton Waters said in his opening statement. “But like a lot of things that are complicated, we start to put them all together, piecing together like a puzzle — all the sudden, a picture emerges.”

The bullets found in Maggie and Paul’s bodies came from ammunition boxes in the Murdaugh home, according to Waters. All three Murdaughs were heard on a cellphone video minutes before Maggie and Paul’s phones were never used again, investigators said. Murdaugh initially told officers he’d been away from the home for an hour before finding their bodies.

Gunpowder and residue was discovered in and around the Murdaugh home in several places, Waters added.

Murdaugh’s defense team argued there was no smoking gun in the case and that investigators never considered other suspects.

“There’s no direct evidence. There’s no eyewitnesses. There’s nothing on camera. There’s no fingerprints. There’s no forensics tying him to the crime. None,” said defense attorney Dick Harpootlian, who moonlights as a Democratic state senator in South Carolina.

Maggie, 52, and Paul, 22, were found dead at the Murdaugh home on June 7, 2021. Both sides described a horrifying scene, in which Maggie and Paul were shot multiple times at close range, and both were shot in the head after they were gravely wounded.

In July 2022, Murdaugh was charged with the murders. In the meantime, his entire life had unwound. Before June 2021, he was known as the latest in a century-long line of Murdaughs with powerful legal positions in southern South Carolina.

Afterwards, he was accused of stealing from his own law firm to fund his drug addiction and admitted to hiring a man to kill him so that his surviving son, Buster, could receive a $10 million life insurance payout. The murder charges are only two of around 100 criminal charges he faces.

Murdaugh referenced a different skeleton in his closet when speaking with officers after the murders, according to body-camera video played Thursday at the trial. In 2019, Paul was driving a boat while drunk and crashed it, killing 19-year-old passenger Mallory Beach. Beach’s family later sued Murdaugh and accused him of covering up Paul’s actions.

“This is a long story. My son was in a boat wreck a while back,” Murdaugh told the first officer on the scene of the murders. “We’ve been getting threats, I know that’s what it is.”

With News Wire Services