WALTERBORO, S.C. (AP) — A judge sentenced South Carolina attorney Alex Murdaugh to life without parole Friday, a day after he was convicted of murder in the shooting deaths of his wife and son.
The Colleton County jury deliberated for less than three hours Thursday before finding Murdaugh guilty of killing his 22-year-old son, Paul, with a shotgun and his 52-year-old wife, Maggie, with a rifle on June 7, 2021.
Murdaugh soon will be taken to a state prison where he will be held in the highest security.
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WALTERBORO, S.C. (AP) — Disgraced South Carolina attorney Alex Murdaugh was convicted of murder Thursday in the shooting deaths of his wife and son in a case that chronicled the unraveling of a powerful Southern family with tales of privilege, greed and addiction.
The jury deliberated for less than three hours before finding Murdaugh guilty of two counts of murder at the end of a six-week trial that pulled back the curtain on the once-prominent lawyer’s fall from grace.
The judge said sentencing would take place at 9:30 a.m. Friday.
Murdaugh, 54, faces 30 years to life in prison without parole for each murder charge.
Through more than 75 witnesses and nearly 800 pieces of evidence, jurors heard about betrayed friends and clients, Murdaugh’s failed attempt to stage his own death in an insurance fraud scheme, a fatal boat crash in which his son was implicated, the housekeeper who died in a fall in the Murdaugh home, the grisly scene of the killings and Bubba, the chicken-snatching dog.
In the end, Murdaugh’s fate appeared sealed by cellphone video taken by his son, who he called “Little Detective” for his knack for finding bottles of painkillers in his father’s belongings after the lawyer had sworn off the pills.
Testimony culminated in Murdaugh’s appearance on the witness stand, when he admitted stealing millions from clients and lying to investigators about being at the dog kennels where the shootings took place but steadfastly maintained his innocence in the deaths of Maggie and Paul Murdaugh.
“I did not kill Maggie, and I did not kill Paul. I would never hurt Maggie, and I would never hurt Paul — ever — under any circumstances,” Murdaugh said.
Murdaugh’s 52-year-old wife was shot four or five times with a rifle and their 22-year-old son was shot twice with a shotgun at the kennels near at their rural Colleton County home on June 7, 2021.
Prosecutors didn’t have the weapons used to kill the Murdaughs or other direct evidence like confessions or blood spatter. But they had a mountain of circumstantial evidence, led by a video locked on Paul Murdaugh’s cellphone for more than a year — video shot minutes before the killings that witnesses testified captured the voices of all three Murdaughs.
Alex Murdaugh, 54, had told police repeatedly after the killings that he was not at the kennels and was instead napping before he went to visit his ailing mother that night. Murdaugh called 911 and said he discovered the bodies when he returned home.
But in his testimony, Murdaugh admitted joining Maggie and Paul at the kennels, where he said he took a chicken away from a rowdy yellow Labrador named Bubba — whose name Murdaugh can be heard saying on the video — before heading back to the house shortly ahead of the fatal shootings.
Murdaugh lied about being at the kennels for 20 months before taking the stand on the 23rd day of his trial. He blamed his decadeslong addiction to opioids for making him paranoid, creating a distrust of police. He said that once he went down that path, he felt trapped in the lie.
“Oh, what a tangled web we weave. Once I told a lie — I told my family — I had to keep lying,” he testified.
Prosecutor Creighton Waters grilled Murdaugh about what he repeatedly called the lawyer’s “new story” of what happened at the kennels, walking him moment by moment through the timeline and assailing his “fuzzy” memory of certain details, like his last words to his wife and son.
A state agent also testified that markings on spent cartridges found around Maggie Murdaugh’s body matched markings on fired cartridges at a shooting range elsewhere on the property, though the defense said that kind of matching is an inexact science.
Murdaugh comes from a family that dominated the local legal scene for decades. His father, grandfather and great-grandfather were the area’s elected prosecutors for more than 80 years and his family law firm grew to dozens of lawyers by suing railroads, corporations and other big businesses.
The now-disbarred attorney admitted stealing millions of dollars from the family firm and clients, saying he needed the money to fund his drug habit. Before he was charged with murder, Murdaugh was in jail awaiting trial on about 100 other charges ranging from insurance fraud to tax evasion.
Prosecutors told jurors that Murdaugh was afraid all of his misdeeds were about to be discovered, so he killed his wife and son to gain sympathy to buy time to cover his tracks.
Murdaugh’s lawyers will almost certainly appeal the conviction based on the judge allowing evidence of the financial crimes, which they contend were unrelated to the killings and were used by prosecutors to smear Murdaugh’s reputation.
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WALTERBORO, S.C. (AP) — A defense lawyer for Alex Murdaugh said Thursday that state agents were so determined to get the disgraced South Carolina attorney convicted of murder in the killings of his wife and son that they lied about or misrepresented evidence.
When closing arguments wrapped up, the judge turned Murdaugh's fate over to jurors after giving them his final instructions, and they headed to their jury room to begin deliberations.
Attorney Jim Griffin gave the defense's closing, emphasizing Murdaugh's main point — that investigators focused solely on him and conducted the investigation so poorly that any evidence pointing to someone else, like fingerprints or possible DNA on Maggie or Paul Murdaugh's clothing, was never gathered.
“How could he have butchered Maggie and Paul without leaving a trace of evidence within a matter of minutes?” Griffin said.
Murdaugh, 54, faces 30 years to life in prison if convicted. Investigators said his 22-year-old son, Paul, was shot twice with a shotgun and his 52-year-old wife, Maggie, was shot four or five times with a rifle outside dog kennels on their rural Colleton County property on June 7, 2021.
Prosecutors got the last word with a rebuttal argument after Griffin spoke.
“You can’t answer every question, and the law doesn't require it," prosecutor John Meadors said.
Investigators think Murdaugh had no more than about 17 minutes from the time his wife and son stopped using their cellphones to when he left the property to visit his ailing mother.
Experts from both sides agreed there had to be a massive amount of blood, tissue and other material from the killings, but the prosecution did not present any evidence of blood spatter on clothes. The weapons in the case also have never been found.
“He had 17 minutes. He would have to be a magician to make all that evidence disappear,” Griffin said.
No one tried to look for DNA on the clothes of the victims, which a killer could have left. No one tried to see if fingerprints or shoe prints could be lifted from the blood around Paul Murdaugh and matched to a possible killer, Griffin said.
Prosecutors think Alex Murdaugh killed his wife and son because he feared his years of stealing millions of dollars from his law firm and clients would be exposed and his lofty standing in the community toppled. They said he hoped their deaths would make him a sympathetic figure and draw attention away from the missing money.
Motive is not a necessary element to prove the crime. But Rachel Fiset, a Los Angeles-based trial attorney, said prosecutors painstakingly laid out motive to address the question she figures must have weighed on juror’s minds.
“I don’t think there could possibly be any conviction without answering that lingering question of why Alex Murdaugh would kill his family,” Fiset said.
A key piece of evidence for prosecutors is a video that includes the voices of Murdaugh, his wife and son at the kennels just minutes before investigators said they were killed. The video wasn’t discovered for a year because agents couldn’t initially hack into his son’s iPhone
For 20 months, Alex Mudaugh told everyone that he wasn't at the kennels but while testifying in his own defense, he finally admitted he was there.
"He lied because that’s what addicts do. He lied because he has a closet full of skeletons," Griffin said.
Prosecutors said all Murdaugh did was lie — to the people he was stealing from, to police about a key fact in their investigation, to his family about his drug use and even about the order in which he checked his wife and son for signs of life, switching who he checked first in different police interviews.
Griffin said that showed how badly the state wants to convict Murdaugh at all costs, referring to prosecutors' closing argument where they said the evidence showed Maggie Murdaugh died while running to see her son.
“Alex was running to his baby. Can you imagine what he saw?" Griffin said. "And is it evidence of guilt that he doesn’t remember what the sequencing was at that moment?”
Griffin said his time as a prosecutor left him pained to say the State Law Enforcement Division either fabricated or lied about evidence.
The lead agent on the case said on the stand that he told the grand jury that indicted Murdaugh 13 months after the deaths that the T-shirt Murdaugh was wearing when police arrived had high velocity blood spatter from his son that happens when someone is shot at close range.
But other agents in the case had already reported further testing on the shirt showed no blood on it and the shirt was never mentioned by prosecutors at the trial.
Meadors said law enforcement is not on trial, Murdaugh is.
The prosecutor said he was offended that Murdaugh's defense is claiming that law enforcement "didn’t do their job while he is withholding and obstructing justice by not saying, 'I was down at the kennels.’”
And there was the matter of the blue rain jacket that state agents said was covered in gunshot residue when it was found at Murdaugh's mother's house. Investigators theorized Murdaugh wrapped guns in it to hide on his parents' property, but Murdaugh's family didn't recognize it and it wasn't his size.
Griffin ended his closing argument with a plea to the jury.
“On behalf of Alex, on behalf of Buster, on behalf of Maggie and on behalf of my friend Paul, I respectfully ask you do not compound a family tragedy with another,” Griffin said, his voice breaking.
Earlier Thursday, Judge Clifton Newman removed a juror because she discussed the case with other people. Five jurors have had to be replaced during the six-week trial, leaving the jury with just one alternate during deliberations, which began at 3:50 p.m. (EST) on Thursday.
Newman's exchange with the juror Thursday was pleasant. He asked her if she needed the bailiff to get any of her things from the jury room. She said she had her purse and a dozen eggs that a fellow juror brought for each juror from his farm.
Fiset said the lone alternate juror marks an alarming development given the risk of illness posed by COVID-19. In a case with less direct evidence, she expects a longer deliberation — and a longer period for members to remain healthy.
“They are one person away from this jury being a mistrial,” Fiset said.