Alex Murdaugh trial reveals a sloppy investigation

WALTERBORO, S.C. » The fourth week of Alex Murdaugh’s double-murder trial began with a cheerful pathologist explaining the gruesome ins and outs of bullets and pellets as they ravaged the bodies of Maggie Murdaugh, 52, and her son, Paul, 22. And it pivoted midweek during a devastating defense cross-examination that poked holes in the state police’s murder investigation.

Last week, pathologist Ellen Riemer of the Medical University of South Carolina expertly walked jurors through grisly photos of Paul and Maggie’s wounds. The killer would have been about 3 feet away when he blew off Paul’s head with a shotgun, Riemer said, and would have been covered in blood and other biological material.

Riemer’s opinions were largely supported Thursday when forensic expert Kenny Kinsey re-created the crime scene and showed jurors photos of blood pooling and spatter, indicating where the victims were standing when first shot and where they fell. Both victims were facing their killer, he said; neither had defensive wounds, presumably suggesting that they knew their assailant.

The week’s blockbuster, however, was prosecution witness David Owen, the lead investigator from the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, who was expected to weave all the evidence into a narrative that would help jurors clearly see that Murdaugh had committed the murders on June 7, 2021.

Defense attorney Jim Griffin then conducted a cross- examination. In point after point, Griffin dismantled SLED’s investigation and eviscerated poor Owen.

Among the several flaws that Griffin pointed out: Investigators didn’t bother to search Murdaugh’s mother’s house, where Murdaugh is thought to have stashed the murder weapons until three months after the killings. SLED also took no DNA samples from either victim’s clothing. Most egregious, Owen incorrectly told the grand jury that blood spatter had been found on the T-shirt Murdaugh was wearing the night of the murders. In fact, none had been found.

SLED tested 74 cuttings from the T-shirt and found no human blood. Owen testified that he never saw the SLED report until November 2022 — well after the grand jury had indicted Murdaugh on two counts of murder and two counts of possession of a weapon in the commission of a violent crime. How does the lead investigator fail to see the crucial report created by his own agency?

In other words, Murdaugh was likely indicted — at least in significant part — on the basis of, shall we say, a colossal untruth. Asked whether he had intended to mislead the grand jury, Owen said no. But he did intend to mislead Murdaugh during their third interview when he told him there was no unknown DNA at the murder scene. In fact, DNA from an unknown male was found under one of Maggie Murdaugh’s fingernails.

Jurors watched a much-anticipated video of that interview showing Murdaugh as it dawned on him that he wasn’t only a suspect but was The Suspect in the murders of his wife and son. Murdaugh was the only suspect almost from the start because, as Owen claimed, there was no evidence to suggest anyone else had been at the family’s hunting compound that night.

But testimony and cross-examination revealed that SLED dropped so many balls that Murdaugh, conceivably, might not have been indicted.

As the defense begins its case next week, it seems doubtful that the state has created a credible nexus between Murdaugh the disbarred lawyer and crook and Murdaugh the murdering father. According to multiple witnesses, the man doted on his family.

Two long guns don’t just materialize at the dog kennels, where witnesses testified guns weren’t usually kept, and then disappear — without a little planning.

The defense’s biggest hurdle is the big lie Murdaugh told about his whereabouts on the day of the murders. He wasn’t napping on the couch at the Moselle house before leaving for his mother’s house at precisely 9:06 p.m. He was at the dog kennels — the scene of the crime — with Maggie and Paul just minutes before the murders, according to a video found on Paul’s cellphone.

Confronted with the video in his third interview Aug. 11, 2021, Murdaugh had little to say. Owen noted Murdaugh’s “distinct voice” and asked whether he could think of anyone else whose voice was so similar to his that he could have been mistakenly identified. Murdaugh could not.