Murdaugh’s financial misdeeds hang over murder trial as Paul’s cell video, guns become focus

By the time the second week of Alex Murdaugh’s double-murder trial had wrapped up Friday, jurors had heard from 26 witnesses as prosecutors used their testimony to serve up a case based on a mix of time-tested information, such as ballistics, and 21st century evidence such as Snapchat videos and cellphone data.

Earlier in the week, prosecutors used cellphones to portray the horror of the last few minutes of the lives of unsuspecting Paul Murdaugh and his mother, Maggie, who were at the family estate’s dog kennels shortly before 9 pm on the night of June 7, 2021, when someone gunned them down. Videos and texts from their cellphones in the minutes and hours before the killings showed they had no idea of their fate.

And one piece of cellphone data — a 58-second video found on Paul’s phone — was perhaps the trial’s most-dramatic moment so far. The video, shot by Paul at the dog kennels, was identified by other witnesses as capturing Alex Murdaugh’s voice just minutes before the killings. If true, the revelation would undermine what has been until now Murdaugh’s alibi — that he was nowhere near the dog kennels that night until he discovered the bodies of his wife and son about 10 p.m.

Murdaugh, 54, a disgraced attorney from a prominent Lowcountry family, is accused of killing his wife, Maggie, and son, Paul, on the family’s 1,700-acre estate known as Moselle. The weapons in the case — a shotgun that killed Paul and a .300 Blackout assault-style rifle that killed Maggie — have never been found.

As the week played out, defense attorneys Dick Harpootlian and Jim Griffin showed no signs of giving up and were using their right to cross-examine state witnesses to try to show weaknesses in the prosecution’s case.

Late Friday, Griffin hammered State Law Enforcement Division firearms expert Paul Greer over Greer’s insinuation on direct examination that a .300 Blackout assault rifle found in a gun room in the Murdaughs’ house could have been the weapon that killed Maggie; Paul was killed with a shotgun.

After Greer identified spent Blackout cartridge shells found by Maggie’s body as having identical markings on them as old, weathered Blackout shells found by a side door near the Murdaughs’ gun room, he seemed to imply — under questioning by state prosecutor David Fernandez — that a Blackout assault rifle in the gun room could have been the murdeer weapon.

“Are you trying to tell this jury,” Griffin fired at Greer, “that the gun in the gun room is the actual gun that killed Maggie?”

Under Griffin’s questioning, Greer admitted that markings on the .300 Blackout cartridges fired by the gun in the gun room were “inconclusive” as to the certainty of that gun being the murder weapon. If prosecutors will try to establish that the death weapon was in the Murdaugh house.

“It’s possible it could have been fired by that gun, and it may not have been fired by that gun,” Greer admitted.

In other areas of a case noteworthy for its complexity:

▪ A jury learned two of Paul’s childhood friends — Will Loving and Rogan Gibson, who viewed the Murdaughs like a “second family” — both confirmed they heard Alex Murdaugh’s voice on a cellphone video captured at the property’s dog kennels at 8:45 p.m. — minutes before prosecutors say Murdaugh gunned his family down. In emotional testimony, both young men appeared bewildered as to what the motive could be.

▪ The defense and prosecution sparred over interpretations of crucial cellphone data presented by SLED Lt. Britt Dove, who testified that Maggie and Paul’s cellphones both locked for the last time around 8:49 p.m., shortly after the video seemingly placed Murdaugh at the crime scene. While Murdaugh’s phone was inactive from 8:09 to 9:02 p.m., the prosecution and defense debated whether the sporadic movement on Maggie’s phone that continued until roughly 9:30 p.m. implicated or exonerated Murdaugh.

The trial within a trial

As the murder trial continued, Judge Clifton Newman sent the jury out and heard witnesses in a parallel proceeding whose outcome may prove crucial to the prosecution and the trial’s eventual outcome.

Lead prosecutor Creighton Waters wants to present to the jury evidence of what Waters describes as Murdaugh’s motive — that the disgraced lawyer killed his wife and son because that very day an elaborate web of his hidden life — wild spending, lies and secret thefts from family, friends, clients and his law firm involving millions of dollars — was about to be exposed.

Newman is letting Waters’ financial fraud witnesses testify so he can decide how much, if any, of their testimony to put before the jury. Their testimony would be about more than just fraud. In committing his alleged thefts, Murdaugh betrayed many of those closest to him.

At least half a dozen witnesses — from prominent Hampton banker Jan Malinowski to Tony Satterfield, a vulnerable-appearing young man — have testified how Murdaugh’s treachery reached an unspeakable level of villainy.

One witness, the normally reserved Jeanne Seckinger, CFO of Murdaugh’s law firm, could scarcely conceal her scorn for Murdaugh as she testified how he had defiled a culture of “brotherhood and trust” at the venerable law firm PMPED, which after Murdaugh’s alleged thefts of millions from clients began to come out, had to rebrand itself with a new name.

Another financial fraud witness, Chris Wilson, described Murdaugh’s oldest and best friend, wept on the witness stand Thursday when he recalled how Murdaugh used him to steal $792,000 from his law firm and left Wilson with a $192,000 debt to repay.

“He was one of my best friends,” said Wilson, who spent more than an hour on the stand, at times dabbing his eyes with a tissue. “I thought he felt the same way about me.”

Asked how he feels now, a downcast Wilson replied, “I don’t know how I feel now, Mr. Waters.”

Newman said late Friday he would hear from one more financial fraud witness Monday morning, when lawyer Mark Tinsley testifies. Tinsley represented some of Murdaugh’s fraud victims.

The defense has strenuously objected to the inclusion of these witnesses. They have maintained that the connection between the exposure of the alleged financial crimes and the killings is illogical and should not be admissible under South Carolina’s rules of evidence, which don’t allow the jury to consider prior alleged criminal conduct.

“It’s all just a theory,” Griffin said. “There’s no facts.”

Murdaugh’s idyllic Moselle

Evidence revealed from cellphones, family friends and former coworkers offered a window into the close-knit and affluent inner life of the Murdaugh family.

On Wednesday, Loving and Gibson, 26, Paul’s childhood friends — detailed to the jury about the closeness of the Murdaugh family, especially how Murdaugh loved his wife and especially his youngest son, Paul.

“It just kind of seemed like Paul was the apple of his (Murdaugh’s) eye,” Loving testified, adding that Murdaugh and Maggie got along well. “I thought they had an awesome relationship, ... always laughing.”

Moselle was Paul’s “passion,” according to Gibson. Murdaugh invited Paul’s friend to hunt, fish and hang out at the property. “Mrs. Maggie” was like a second mom and hosted Paul’s friends at the family’s Edisto beach house.

Everyone had nicknames, according to Gibson, who lived with Buster one summer at a cabin on the property.

Paul was called “Rooster,” and his older brother, Buster, was called “Bus.” Murdaugh was known as “Big Red,” and Maggie went by “Miss Maggie.”

But on the stand, Gibson and Will testified that Murdaugh could be heard in the background of that video Paul took of Gibson’s dog the night of the killings.

In emotional testimony, the young men, who both described the Murdaugh’s as a “second family,” said that the woman’s voice belonged to Maggie. And they were “100%” sure the man’s voice was Alex Murdaugh.

Defense attorneys used the testimony about the clsoe-knit Murdaugh family to argue that it shows a loving father and husband who would never be driven to kill, while prosecutors have portrayed it as a house of cards that Murdaugh blew down.

‘I would be wanting more’

Murdaugh has always maintained that he was not at the kennels that night, until he discovered the bodies. Data from his cellphone, presented to the jury early in the week by SLED Lt. Britt Dove, showed no activity between 8:09 and 9:02 p.m.

Both Paul and Maggie’s cellphones “went dark” around 8:49, Dove said, approximately four minutes after Paul filmed the video of the dog. From that point on, the data pulled from the cellphones show no texts were read and all calls went unanswered.

But the cellphone data continues to offer tantalizing clues. Between 8:53 and 8:55 p.m., Maggie’s phone records movement. It also registers an orientation change — going from portrait to landscape mode — and a one-second camera activation, as if someone accidentally activated Face ID, Britt said. But the phone does not unlock, indicating that someone other than Maggie picked up her phone, which was found half a mile away from Moselle the following morning.

Focusing on Maggie’s cellphone, defense attorney Phil Barber argued the idea that someone other than Murdaugh had Maggie’s phone:

▪ Between 9:02 p.m. and 9:06 p.m., Murdaugh’s phone recorded 283 steps.

▪ At 9:06 p.m., three key events happened, Barber said: Murdaugh called Maggie; his Chevrolet Suburban turned on, and Maggie’s phone recorded its final orientation change, indicating that the phone had been rotated. However, Maggie’s phone recorded no steps.

“It appears the phones were not being moved together by the same person because they are not (both) recording steps,” Dove said during cross-examination.

After court Friday, members of the public who have been packing the 234-seat courtroom spilled out of the courthouse. Observers came from states such as Florida, North Carolina, Georgia and elsewhere for a chance to glimpse in person one of the most-publicized murder trials this century.

“I think both sides are fighting equally,” said Natalie Turner, 51, an Atlanta sales representative who came for the afternoon with three friends and was lingering on the courthouse lawn at day’s end.

“Both sides have hit their punches. It’s up and down.”

If she were on the jury now, said Turner, who like her friends has been following the trial on Court TV, “I would be thinking that he’s (Murdaugh) a liar, they caught him in a lie. I would also be really tired because a lot of the gun evidence today was really monotonous and tiring, and it was Friday afternoon.”

But, she said with a smile, “I would be wanting more.”

Members of the Murdaugh family continue to come to court. They include Murdaugh’s two brothers, John Marvin and Randy, his older sister, Lynn, and Murdaugh’s son, Buster.

Little bits of unexpected evidence continue to surface each day. On Friday, for example, the jury learned that Paul had been hit with a blast of 49 tiny pellets of bird shot. Much of the testimony is much more tedious.

Up to now, Newman has aimed at a three-week trial. But the case has proceeded more slowly than expected, and now people connected with the trial are talking about the trial going well into a fourth week.

This story was originally published February 3, 2023 at 8:14 PM with the headline "Murdaugh’s financial misdeeds hang over murder trial as Paul’s cell video, guns become focus."