Opening statements began Wednesday in the trial of Alex Murdaugh, who has been charged with the 2021 murders of his wife and youngest son.
Motive, blood spatter, and ballistic firearms analysis at the center of this fight. The judge ruled ballistics testimony allowed but said the others should be left for the jury.Opening statements began Wednesday afternoon in Walterboro, South Carolina, in the trial of Alex Murdaugh, who has been charged with the 2021 murders of his wife and youngest son -- the most serious and the grisliest of allegations faced by the once prominent, but now disbarred, attorney.
But Murdaugh's defense attorney, Dick Harpootlian, said the state's opening was filled only with "theories" and "conjecture. His client, who appeared in court wearing a navy sport coat and glasses, was "the loving father of Paul and the loving husband of Maggie," Harpootlian said. The trial has been slightly complicated by the prominence of the Murdaugh family and name: What was already a gripping tragedy worthy of true crime podcasts and documentaries was given a Southern Gothic twist, in large part because three generations of Murdaughs over 87 years served as solicitor for the 14th Circuit, which oversaw prosecutions throughout the South Carolina Lowcountry.
Maggie's phone locked for the final time around 8:49 p.m. the night of the killings, Waters said. Murdaugh -- whose phone did not record much activity for about an hour beginning at 8:09 p.m., per Waters -- called his wife at 9:02 p.m. She didn't answer, and he called again just four minutes later. He then texted his wife that he was going to visit his mother and drove to Almeda, South Carolina.
Murdaugh's voice, the prosecutor claimed, will be heard in video Paul recorded from the kennels on the family's property the night of the killing, along with his wife's and son's, minutes before his son's phone "locks forever."In his own opening, Harpootlian acknowledged the brutality of the murders, saying Maggie and Paul Murdaugh had been "butchered."
Harpootlian also offered a counter to the prosecution's description of the missing rifle, saying Paul was "very irresponsible with guns, cars. He'd leave guns around, he'd leave guns in cars." "Your mental framework is, he didn't do it," Harpootlian said. "They have to prove it to me beyond a reasonable doubt."Murdaugh's facade as the scion of a prominent legal dynasty began to crumble several months after the killings, when he called 911 to report he'd been shot on the side of the road in Hampton County, not far from his home.
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