Prosecutors drill down on Murdaugh movements from the night of murders
Prosecutors confronted Alex Murdaugh for the first time about his presence at the dog kennels where his wife and son were killed.
The disbarred Lowcountry attorney emphatically denied killing his wife, Maggie, and son, Paul, at the family’s rural Colleton County home on June 7, 2021. But he admitted first on the witness stand Thursday that he lied to investigators about being with Maggie and Paul at the property’s dog kennels shortly before the murders, after a video shot on Paul’s cellphone captured his voice at the scene.
Prosecutor Creighton Waters confronted Murdaugh about that statement Friday morning, pushing Murdaugh to admit he did not confess his presence there on June 7, 2021, to his friends, family or law partners before he first took the stand Thursday.
He also lied about his whereabouts to law enforcement, Waters said.
“Other than lying to them about going to the kennel, I was cooperative in every aspect of this investigation,” Murdaugh said.
“Very cooperative, except for maybe the most important fact of all that you were with the victims just minutes before they died,” Waters shot back.
Murdaugh’s attorneys were claiming in television interviews as late as November 2022 that Murdaugh was home napping when the murders took place 1,000 feet away from the house, and did not go to the kennels until he
found their bodies more than an hour later. Multiple witnesses who know Murdaugh testified that the voice on the video belonged to him.
“You couldn’t deny it, so like so often before, you had to come up with another lie,” Waters said.
Murdaugh maintained that the story he told first Thursday was the truth — he visited briefly with Maggie and Paul at the kennels before leaving to visit his mother, Libby, and had no knowledge of or involvement with them getting shot to death.
Waters asked for details Friday on his interactions with his family at the kennels, and tried to determine how long he had been there. Murdaugh said he spoke to Maggie from a golf cart for a minute, then retrieved a chicken from his dog and then quickly left because it was hot.
Murdaugh initially testified that he dozed off briefly when he returned home, but his cellphone showed activity at 9:02 p.m., just minutes after he would have returned home, Waters said.