Disgraced South Carolina attorney Alex Murdaugh faced intense questioning about his movements the night his wife and son were killed as the prosecutor challenged inconsistencies in his memory Friday at his double murder trial.
A day after revealing for the first time that he was at the kennels where his wife and son were shot shortly before they died, Murdaugh returned to the stand in his defense. During cross-examination, prosecutor Creighton Waters grilled Murdaugh about what he repeatedly called the once-prominent lawyer’s “new story” about what happened at the kennels on the evening of June 7, 2021.
Defendant Alex Murdaugh is cross examined by prosecutor Creighton Waters while testifying during his murder trial at the Colleton County Courthouse in Walterboro, S.C. on Friday. The 54-year-old attorney is standing trial on two counts of murder in the shootings of his wife and son at their Colleton County, S.C., home and hunting lodge on June 7, 2021. Joshua Boucher/The State via AP
Waters asked Murdaugh if he meant what he told the jury Thursday – that he tried to help police find the killers.
“Other than lying to them about going to the kennels, I was cooperative in every aspect of this investigation,” Murdaugh said.
“Very cooperative except maybe the most important fact of all, that you were at the murder scene with the victims just minutes before they died,” Waters replied.
For 20 months, Murdaugh insisted that he was never at the kennels. But after more than a year, state agents hacked his son’s iPhone and found a video with Alex Murdaugh’s voice less than five minutes before the victims stopped using their cellphones and prosecutors think they were shot.
Murdaugh, 54, is charged with murder in the deaths of his wife, Maggie, 52, and their 22-year-old son, Paul, but has steadfastly denied any involvement. He faces 30 years to life in prison if convicted.
Waters pushed Murdaugh for more details about what happened during the kennel visit, noting that this was all new to investigators since he only admitted it in court Thursday.
The timing, including cellphone and car-tracking data, is a key component. The video ended just before 8:46 p.m. and both Paul and Maggie Murdaugh stopped using their cell phones about three minutes later.
Murdaugh couldn’t remember how long he was at the kennels, whether he got blood on his hands pulling a dead chicken from a dog’s mouth or the last words he would ever say to his son and his wife.
“There would have been some exchange,” Murdaugh said.
Waters said it appeared Murdaugh remembered a lot of specifics when the details were critical, but not when they might get him in trouble.
“You disagree with my characterization that you have a photographic memory about the details that have to fit now that you know these facts but you’re fuzzy about the other stuff that complicates that?” Waters said.
Waters also asked Murdaugh if the dogs at the kennels were barking or acting unusually while the three were down there, as they might if a stranger were nearby.
“No. There was nobody around the dogs didn’t know,” Murdaugh said.
Defense attorneys have contended that prosecutors incorrectly locked in on Murdaugh’s guilt from the start, without considering other suspects.
For the first time, Murdaugh blamed anger on social media aimed at his son for the killings. Paul Murdaugh had been involved in a boat wreck that killed a teenager and was charged with boating under the influence. He mentioned the boat crash when the first investigators asked if he could think of any suspects.
Murdaugh said his son was the subject of vile “half-truths, half-reports, half-statements, partial information” online.
“I believe then and I believe today that the wrong person saw and read that because I can tell you for a fact the person or people who did what I saw on June the 7th – they hated Paul Murdaugh and they had anger in their heart,” Alex Murdaugh said.
Waters told Murdaugh that explanation defied logic, asking if Murdaugh was telling the jury that his wife and son were killed by random vigilantes who knew “they would be at the kennels alone on June 7, knew that you would not be there, but only between the times of 8:49 and 9:02.”
“You’ve got a lot of factors in there, Mr. Waters, all of which I do not agree with, but some of which I do,” Murdaugh said.
Murdaugh said Friday that after the brief kennel visit, he returned to the family’s house about 1,150 feet away on a golf cart, lay down for a few minutes, and then got up to get ready to visit his ailing mother at about 9:02 p.m., a time verified by step data on his cellphone, which he didn’t take to the kennels.
Waters asked Murdaugh if a flurry of steps and a series of unanswered phone calls he started making to his wife and son at 9:02 p.m. after no activity was detected on his phone for nearly an hour, was a way a lawyer and volunteer prosecutor could begin crafting a story to show he couldn’t be the killer.
“I never manufactured any alibi in any way shape or form because I did not and would not hurt my wife and my child.”
Prosecutors have said Murdaugh killed his wife and son to gain sympathy to buy time because his financial misdeeds were about to be discovered. During his testimony, he admitted to stealing from clients.
Murdaugh is charged with about 100 other crimes, ranging from stealing from clients to tax evasion. He is being held without bail on those charges, so even if he is found not guilty of the killings, he will not walk out of court as a free man. If convicted of most or all of those financial crimes, Murdaugh would likely spend decades in prison.
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