Deputy Attorney General Alex Murdaugh, a 49-Year-Old Physicist and Victim of a Family Lawsuit

“He said, ‘I’m sorry I’ve had a drug problem, I’m addicted to opioids … for something like 20 years,’ ” the friend, Chris Wilson, testified. He confessed that he had been stealing money from his clients and his law firm, and that he had a drug addiction.

According to prosecutors, a check that was supposed to be sent to the law firm by Mr. Murdaugh’s wife was instead made out to someone else. That finding led the firm to investigate further and, when they discovered evidence of financial wrongdoing, to ask for his resignation, which he gave.

On June 7, 2001 Murdaugh’s wife Margaret, his son Paul and himself were killed by Murdaugh with a weapon.

According to the prosecution, Murdaugh wanted to distract and delay investigations into his financial wrongdoing. Griffin mocked that theory as nonsensical and noted that Murdaugh tried to kill himself in September 2021, calling that a “natural” response to being exposed.

Much of this week’s testimony has focused on Alex Murdaugh’s financial issues. The judge ruled Monday to allow such evidence, saying it was “so intimately connected” with the state’s case “that proof of it is essential to complete the story.”

Wilson was asked by Murdaugh to rewrite the check and send it to the law firm. Wilson had to use his own money to cover the difference after Murdaugh wired him $600,000 but said he didn’t have the full funds.

The prosecutors argued that Murdaugh wanted to distract and delay investigations into his financial problems. They argued he stole millions of dollars from his former clients and a law firm as well as lying to cover his tracks, because he admitted to in court that he lied.

Also in court Thursday, Michael “Tony” Satterfield, the son of Murdaugh’s former housekeeper Gloria Satterfield, testified about being defrauded by Murdaugh.

Satterfield said that he heard about the settlement from his family. Murdaugh told him it was still making progress and to be ready to settle by the end of the year after he asked about it.

Murdaugh, 24, and the Mallory Beach, 19-year-old, in a double-murder trial: “I’m sorry but I know I can’t do that”

The CEO of the local bank testified that Murdaugh had his account overdrawn. According to Jan Malinowski, the bank CEO, Murdaugh had a total debt of $4.2 million.

Second, Murdaugh was facing a lawsuit from the family of Mallory Beach, a 19-year-old who was killed in February 2019 when a boat, owned by Murdaugh and allegedly driven by his son Paul, crashed. The civil case was supposed to be heard on June 10, 2021, but was delayed after the killings because it could have revealed his financial problems.

Tinsley was asked about the lawsuit on Thursday. 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.

After his law firm confronted him about missing funds, he resigned, went to rehab, and was later charged with dozens of financial crimes but didn’t go to jail.

The sentencing closes a six-week-long trial that charted Murdaugh’s fall from grace. Murdaugh, the son of a family of lawyers and prosecutors, has been disbarred. He admitted to the financial crimes he was accused of during his murder trial.

Maggie Murdaugh was worried about money possibly being demanded of her family in a lawsuit and suspicious her husband wasn’t being entirely honest with her in the days before her killing, housekeeper Blanca Turrubiate-Simpson testified Friday in the double-murder trial of Alex Murdaugh.

She told me that she was concerned about the amount of money that they were requesting in the lawsuit. “She said she knew the amount of money they were asking.

Turrubiate-Simpson said that he was told that people would probably stop by and bring food. “He said I just want the house to look the way Maggie would like for it to look. So, I said OK and I went to the house.”

Ahead of Turrubiate-Simpson’s testimony, some Murdaugh relatives were ordered this week to sit farther back in the South Carolina courtroom due to inappropriate contact and conduct, the Colleton County clerk of court 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.

The source said the book was not obvious what was in it, and that Murdaugh had already been returned to his jail cell. The book – John Grisham’s “The Judge’s List” – was later confiscated.

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.

Amid the book incident, Wednesday’s testimony was interrupted when a bomb threat was called into the clerk’s office and the courthouse in Walterboro was evacuated, Hill said. Hours later, the court resumed.

Legal teams on Thursday offered a glimpse into the remaining trial schedule: Closing arguments could start around February 23, based on attorneys’ estimates – weeks after Friday’s originally scheduled end date.

The state hoped to rest its case by the middle of next week, prosecutor Creighton Waters said, while the defense will need at least a week, defense attorney Dick Harpootlian said, noting it could be on the shorter side because of how long testimony already has lasted.

The defense has out-of-state expert witnesses who will require travel and lodging, Harpootlian said, pointing out the length of the state’s case is making that difficult and expensive to schedule. The state so far has called 44 witnesses and introduced more than 400 exhibits of evidence.

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 was able to view the video was on Monday, when it was seen by the jury.

About 30 seconds after Greene and Murdaugh begin talking, the deputy asks him whether the gun he brought to the scene was from inside the home. Murdaugh says yes, and then offers his own reason for why someone would kill his family.

The deputy asked where the gun was, and Murdaugh said it was leaning against his vehicle. The deputy checks Murdaugh’s shirt before talking further.

“This is a long story. My son was in a wreck months ago. He’s been getting threats,” Murdaugh says. Most of it was benign. He has been getting punched and we didn’t take it seriously. I know what it is.

Data showed that Murdaugh stayed at his parents’ home for about 20 minutes that night before leaving to head back to the Moselle property, the investigator testified.

Riemer’s testimony on a shooting in the head of a friend of his cousin, Paul Murdaugh, during a road trip

A video 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. The supervisor in the computer crimes center is David Dove.

Ellen Riemer, a pathologist at the Medical University of South Carolina, gave graphic testimony Monday about the injuries she saw when looking at autopsy results for Paul andMaggie.

The force of the shot caused his brain to be ejected, Riemer said, and it arrived to the autopsy separately. At this testimony, Alex Murdaugh was visibly upset, and grabbed a tissue and wiped his eyes and nose.

Mr. Murdaugh claimed to have been shot in the head while he was fixing a flat tire and he didn’t know who did it. He was taken to a hospital, but his story soon began to fall apart. It turned out that he had not been alone on the side of the road, as he had claimed, but was with a friend and distant cousin, Curtis Edward Smith.

Riemer testified that he didn’t see anything on his hand that would suggest that he had braced himself for the injury. I didn’t think he had injury to his hands after the second shot, because his arm was down.

The next shot went upward, starting at Maggie’s chest and going through the left side of her face. Riemer said she attributed that to the first two shots causing Maggie to double over, with her head bent over. She said that the wound would have been fatal. The last gunshot, Riemer testified, was to the back of the head.

On the Murdaugh Dynasty: Jurors have been notified that he is charged with a drug induced death

The remaining jurors were tested Monday and will be tested again Wednesday. The judge said jurors would wear masks and be positive, even though prosecutors and defense attorneys discussed postponing the day’s proceedings.

The Murdaugh Dynasty is the subject of a docu series on the television channel,Hbo. CNN airs the show on Sunday, February 19 at 8 pm.

Evidence presented in court showed that Paul Murdaugh confronted his father about pills about one month before he and his mother were found dead.

According to prosecutors, a cell phone records showed that a person named Murdaugh searched for pill on one side of the internet. The description has a pill in it. She deleted her searches for the pills, the prosecution said.

Murdaugh and Waters: Witnesses and a Coroner Investigate. Smith formally charged with two murders and two charges of second degree murders

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

The defense has portrayed the accused as a loving father and husband who called for help after he found his wife and son, while the real murderers remain at large, and who is being prosecuted after a poorly handled investigation.

Murdaugh had the means to commit the murders, Waters said. Maggie was killed by a Blackout rifle and Paul was killed by a shotgun, and Waters said both were family weapons.

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.

Peter Rudofski, an investigator with the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, testified Friday that he was able to Plot Murdaugh’s movements on the night of the murders.

Rudofski testified that while on his way to his mother’s house that night, Murdaugh drove by the spot on the side of the road where Maggie’s cell phone was later recovered by investigators.

Murdaugh turned into the front entrance at the Moselle property at roughly 10 p.m. that night, and shortly after, headed over to the family’s dog kennels located on the property, arriving there at 10:05 p.m., the investigator testified.

He told investigators on the night of the killings that when he arrived at the crime scene, he attempted to contact both of them with his cell phone and then tried to call the police.

The South Carolina State Law Enforcement Division said they were opening their own inquiry into Smith’s death after the investigation into the killings of the Murdaughs.

The case was transferred that same day from the local solicitor to the Attorney General’s Office, which has been prosecuting the case due to the Murdaugh family’s long ties with the local solicitor: Three generations of Murdaughs served as the 14th Circuit Solicitor over about 87 years.

The SLED agents confronted Murdaugh about evidence that appeared to be contrary to his earlier statements to law enforcement.

Owen testified that Murdaugh was confronted about the fact that his voice was heard on the phone call that Rogan had with Paul moments before he was murdered.

“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?”

Murdaugh and Blanca Simpson, the fathers of two murder victims, and a roadside shooting that killed Smith, his mother, and his wife

The agents confronted Murdaugh about the footage Paul filmed on the family’s property that he posted on the social media site, according to the footage. Murdaugh is wearing pants and a shirt. But later, he was wearing shorts and a white T-shirt.

There is a video on your husband’s phone from the farm that night. You wore a dress shirt and shorts when I met you, Owen said. “At what point in the evening did you change clothes?”

Blanca Simpson, a family housekeeper, similarly testified last week that Maggie told her the day of the murders that Alex had asked both Maggie and Paul to come to Moselle that night.

“And the reason you didn’t, (was because) you weren’t concerned about those clothes. Your investigation had been focused since early June on the T-shirt he was wearing, the shorts he was wearing and shoes he was wearing at the time he called 911,” Griffin said.

Owen claimed to a grand jury that an expert found blood spatter on the front of the T-shirt, and that it was sent to a lab for testing. The test did not find blood on the shirt.

“Y’all completely overlooked the fact that when you did a HemaTrace test to confirm whether there’s blood, it came up negative. Wasn’t that the one that was overlooked?

The blasts that killed the two victims were likely to have biological material on them, according to Owen.

Griffin established that Murdaugh’s mother’s property in Almeda was not searched until months after the killings, in September 2021. Owen testified that there were no weapons found on the property.

The jury also has heard testimony about a roadside shooting that injured Murdaugh in September 2021, months after the killings. Authorities have alleged that Murdaugh arranged for another man to shoot him so that Buster could obtain millions of dollars in life insurance.

Owen testified that he was told that the gang was not worried about Smith’s money because they knew it was going to be paid.

“Prior to that day, had Alex Murdaugh ever mentioned to you Curtis Edward Smith or anyone else that might have been involved in his son’s or his wife’s murder?” prosecutor John Meadors asked.

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. State investigators identified the first responders who came to the scene around Moselle, Owen said.

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.

Alex Murdaugh was accused of killing his wife and son in a double murder trial, but the defense called his surviving son to testify.

Buster Murdaugh was called as the defense’s first witness of the day. A source familiar with the case told CNN that the accident reconstructionist would focus on the findings at the scene, as well as what conclusions were drawn from it.

He told investigators he found his wife and son on the ground in his home, after returning home from the family estate.

An almost minute-long video filmed on Paul’s phone beginning at 8:44 p.m. shows one of the family dogs and appears to have been taken at the kennels, Lt. David Dove was a supervisor in the computer crimes center.

Officers with the Colleton County Sheriff’s Office wrote in reports that they had discovered several shell casings and had called a tow truck company to the scene. They said they looked for cameras from other businesses but police reports didn’t show whether or not they found any.

On the Murdaugh Plan to Shoot a Dog to Kill a Man: An Internal Investigation Into His Personal Attitudes and His Podianoid Thoughts

Mr Murdaugh admitted that he had asked Mr. Smith to shoot him. Mr. Murdaugh had a plan to make his suicide appear like a murder so that he could collect on his life insurance policy.

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 interview.

Murdaugh had lied about his involvement in the deaths of his wife and son on the night of the murders. He said the lies were to hide his drug addiction and financial problems.

According to prosecutors, Murdaugh killed his wife and son to serve his own ends after pilfering millions of dollars from his clients and colleagues. They said he was facing a lot of debt and was also being held liable in a court case for the fatal boating accident that occurred in the summer of 2019.

Murdaugh said that on days where he didn’t have as much, he would take between 1,000 and 1,200 grams of simmpol, depending on the day.

The defense of Alex Murdaugh hired a former professor for forensic science to analyze the crime scene.

He testified that it was hard for the shooter to have two long weapons. “Add that to what I believe happened to the shooter who fired first with the shotgun, and I think it tips in favor of the probability of two shooters.”

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.

John Murdaugh and the murder of his young son, Paul, on the Murmurdaugh estate: a test case for self-defense

The prosecution used 61 witnesses over the course of three weeks, and will seek rebuttal testimony on Tuesday. Judge Clifton Newman also ruled jurors will be allowed to visit the family’s sprawling estate after the rebuttal witnesses but prior to closing arguments.

The 14th and final defense witness was John Marvin Murdaugh, who was upset that the crime scene was not cleaned up after it was released to the family.

“There was a piece of Paul’s skull about the size of a baseball laying there,” he said. I was enraged that this young man had been murdered and his remains were still there.

The defense also worked to show that investigators had done a shoddy job with the case, particularly in securing the crime scene. Mark Ball, one of Murdaugh’s law firm colleagues, testified there were no barricades or police tape blocking the entrance to the property and said Paul’s remains were still there after investigators left.

In particular, they have tried to prove he was at the crime scene that night, worked to show he lied to investigators and painted a picture of a fraudster who killed his wife and son in a desperate bid to distract the investigations into his actions.

After that shooting, he went to rehab for drugs, was disbarred and charged with murder for the deaths of two people.

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.

“If I was under the pressure that they’re talking about here, I can promise you I would hurt myself before I would hurt one of them, without a doubt,” Murdaugh said on the stand Friday.

The Strange Case of Harvey R.M. Murdaugh, 77, of Charleston, SC, and His Charged Criminal, David Weinstein, D.C. Stein, Jr., III, v. C.A.

Harvey, who said he arrived on scene at 11:04 p.m., also testified that rigor mortis – the stiffening of a body’s joints and muscles following death – 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.”

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

Harvey said he did not 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.

“This defendant … has fooled everyone, everyone, everyone who thought they were close to him,” prosecutor Creighton Waters told the jury. “Everyone who thought they knew who he was, he’s fooled them all. He fooled Maggie and Paul, too, and they paid for it with their lives. Don’t let him fool you, too.”

Alex Murdaugh, the former personal injury attorney who was once a member of a family that served as the local prosecutor in South Carolina, has become a national celebrity due to his strange-than-fiction case.

There is evidence that shows that he began to steal because the millions of dollars in legal fees were not enough and he became addicted to money.

When Murdaugh and Bamberg met at Moselle, a lawyer revealed his frustration at the time of the Moselle murders, saying he had lied to law enforcement

Waters reconstructed the prosecutions version of events before, during, and after the murders at Moselle using phone forensics.

“That changed everything. Why do you think it changed everything? There is an opportunity. Waters was at the scene when the murders occurred. The most important thing he could have told law enforcement was lies. When did I last see my wife and child? Why in the world would an innocent, reasonable father lie to his son about something he knew nothing about? He wasn’t aware that video was there.

He pointed to the testimony of a weapons expert who said that there were bullet holes in the rifle that were discovered by the investigators, but it did not match the bullet holes in other parts of the property.

“A family Blackout killed Maggie. The place was present a few months prior to the murders. A family weapon the defendant cannot account for killed Maggie.”

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

A lawyer representing alleged financial crime victims of Murdaugh also was surprised by the speed of the verdict, he said. When Justin Bamberg heard a verdict had been reached less than three hours after deliberations started, he suspected Murdaugh would be convicted, he said.

The defense team gave their closing arguments on Thursday saying law enforcement was too quick to link Murdaugh to the killings.

The defense is claiming that law enforcement did not do their job, while he is withholding and obstructing justice by not saying so.

The jury will decide the fate of Murdaugh if it is found guilty of a crime committed in the 18th Circuit Circuit Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit

The agency failed to take fingerprints, examine footwear, tire impressions, or test for DNA when hair was found in Murdaugh’s wife’s hand.

“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.”

Alex Murdaugh was sentenced to life in prison Friday for killing his wife and son, another chapter in the downfall of the disgraced attorney whose family had a lot of legal power in parts of South Carolina.

I was surprised to have you testify that it was just another ordinary day. ‘My wife and son and I were out just enjoying life.’ Not credible. Not believable. You can convince yourself about it Judge Newman handed down two life sentences after he said that the person couldn’t convince anyone else about it.

When you want to sleep, you need to see Paul andMaggie during the night. I’m sure they come and visit you, I’m sure,” the judge told Murdaugh at one point in the Colleton County courtroom.

Typically, sentencing hearings include victim impact statements. There were no on Friday. Instead, the hearing stood out for Newman’s direct exchanges with Murdaugh, whose defense the judge said represented “an assault on the integrity of the judicial system.”

In this courtroom, your family and many others have prosecuted people here over the course of a century and many of them have received the death penalty for lesser conduct.

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

The Murdaugh Trial in South Carolina: A Step Towards justice for a man who has been lying to people, and he’s solving his own death

Murdaugh was freed from the custody of the South Carolina Department ofCorrections. He wore handcuffs and a brown jumpsuit, and left the courtroom under a law enforcement official’s watch.

The lead prosecutor said at a Thursday news conference that justice had been done. No matter who your family is, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter how much money you have, or people think you have. It doesn’t matter … how prominent you are.

The defense after the verdict asked for a mistrial, but Newman denied it, saying the jury had gotten enough time to consider the evidence – and the evidence of guilt was “overwhelming.”

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.

Murdaugh then testified the voice was his – and that he’d lied to investigators about his whereabouts because he grew paranoid, which he blamed on his addiction to opioid painkillers.

The victim was Paul Murdaugh and he solved his own death, Dave Aronberg, the state attorney for Palm Beach County told CNN.

The former law firm renamed by Murdaugh after his actions called Thursday’s verdict a step toward justice. Several members of the law group testified during the murder trial.

Sara said that the man was convicted with conviction. “I really thought there was going to be somewhat of a struggle in this jury room. I think they couldn’t get past the lie” about the kennel video.

“The one thing you can clearly take away from this was, he had been lying to a lot of people that he loved for a long time, and so he had obviously gotten to be pretty good at it,” Bill Nettles told CNN.

“If he went in there and they believed him, then he would have likely been found not guilty. But once they decide that he’s willing to put himself out there and they don’t believe him, that’s kind of a tough hill to get over,” he added.

“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.

“Every single person who’s been victimized by Alex has wanted one thing: complete accountability,” he said. “And complete accountability started here today with this jury verdict.”

“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 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. Perhaps, he added, Murdaugh’s noted drug addiction caused him to become another person.

Murdaugh said repeatedly that he didn’t go with his wife and son to the dog kennels where they were shot and killed, saying that he stayed in the house, and took a nap before leaving to see his ailing mother.

A forensic autopsy of the murder of a teenager killed on a rural road near the hunting estate of disgraced South Carolina attorney Alex Murdaugh

An independent autopsy will be performed on the teenager who was found dead on a road near the hunting estate of disgraced South Carolina attorney Alex Murdaugh.

Smith’s family has always insisted that his injuries weren’t consistent with a hit-and-run, as well as suggesting that there was no debris near the rural road where his body was found.

Sandy Smith wrote on a GoFundMe page that their family is very grateful to everyone who helped them pay for Stephen’s exhumation.

Smith’s death will be looked at by the agency based on information gathered during the double murder investigation of the Murdaughs.