At the conclusion of a six-week trial, the jury deliberated for less than three hours before convicting Alex Murdaugh, 54, of two counts of murder. A disgraced South Carolina attorney was convicted guilty of murdering his wife and son in order to divert attention from his multimillion-dollar monetary crimes.
With each murder charge, he faces 30 years to life in jail without the possibility of release.
On June 7, 2021, Maggie and Paul Murdaugh were shot at close range near the dog kennels on their family’s estate.
Alex Murdaugh looked unmoved as he learned his fate during the Walterboro hearing on Thursday evening.
After he denied a defense motion for a mistrial, South Carolina Circuit Court Judge Clifton Newman stated,
“The evidence of guilt is overwhelming.” The sentencing was planned for Friday morning.
Murdaugh had pleaded not guilty to the murders of his wife and youngest son in an effort to cover years of financial wrongdoing – fraud that he had admitted in court.
Immediately following the verdict of the 12-person jury, dozens of people gathered outside the courtroom’s rear entrance, where officers promptly placed a shackled Murdaugh into a black van.
Despite reporters shouting questions, he remained silent. While he was being placed in the police truck, a man behind the media line yelled that he was praying for him.
The case, which chronicled the decline of a family born into power and fortune, grabbed national headlines and inspired Netflix and HBO documentaries.
Murdaugh was previously a prominent personal injury attorney in the state, and until 2006, members of his family functioned as the top prosecutors in the region.
The trial revealed, however, that he had been stealing from his law partners and clients for years in order to support his painkiller addiction and luxurious lifestyle.
It took investigators over a year to arrest Murdaugh as they unraveled the intricate case.
Murdaugh took the witness stand in a dangerous move for a murder defendant, attempting to convince the jury that someone seeking revenge for Paul’s death in a 2019 boating accident could have murdered his son.
Murdaugh testified,
“I would never harm Maggie, and I would never harm Paul, ever, under any circumstances.”
The whole case against him rested on circumstantial evidence. At trial, no direct evidence, such as a murder weapon, blood on the defendant’s clothing, or an eyewitness, was offered.
Instead, the prosecution centered its case on an incriminating Snapchat video captured by Murdaugh’s son immediately prior to the murders.
Paul and his mother were murdered at the kennels on the huge hunting estate known as Moselle.
Twenty months after their killings, Alex Murdaugh repeatedly informed law authorities he had not been at the dog kennels that evening and was instead asleep at home.
Nonetheless, the defendant’s voice was audible in the background of the Snapchat video shot by Paul mere minutes before the gunshots.
Murdaugh testified in court that he had lied when he claimed that his years-long addiction to opiates had rendered him paranoid.
Three months after he murdered his 52-year-old wife and 22-year-old son, the court heard of Murdaugh’s odd attempt to fake his own death as part of an insurance fraud scheme.
Jessica Williams, a 38-year-old local resident, stood outside the courthouse with her 6-year-old daughter, conversing on the phone while observing the proceedings.
“I am extremely thrilled,” she told BBC News following the decision’s announcement, adding, “I remember where I was when OJ Simpson’s verdict was rendered [in 1995]. This was the same as before.”
Judge Newman determined early in the proceedings that prosecutors could present evidence of Murdaugh’s alleged financial wrongdoing.
According to investigators, he stole millions from clients and employees, including $3.7 million (£3 million) in 2019. And throughout his trial, Murdaugh admitted to massive larceny.
Prosecutors stated that these misdeeds pushed him to murder, as he believed that the murders of Maggie and Paul would garner him sympathy and prevent him from facing justice for his previous misdeeds.
Murdaugh and his defense team contended in court that this hypothesis was absurd and that he would never have committed murder due to financial difficulties.
Several witnesses claimed that on the night of the murders, Alex Murdaugh urged Maggie to return to Moselle from the family’s other property in neighboring Edisto Beach.
Maggie preferred Edisto to Moselle and had no intention of leaving, according to her sister Marion Proctor’s testimony in court. Nevertheless, Murdaugh’s old father was dying, so Mrs. Proctor urged her to provide for him.
Alex Murdaugh and his two boys enjoyed hunting, and Moselle housed an assortment of firearms.
Prosecutors stated that Murdaugh killed Maggie and Paul using a.300 Blackout assault-style rifle and another weapon, respectively. Yet, neither firearm could be located and produced at trial.
The trial heard that Maggie was shot four or five times with a rifle and their boy was wounded twice with a shotgun.
The chief prosecutor in South Carolina, Attorney General Alan Wilson, stated,
“Today’s verdict confirms that no one in society is above the law.”
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