More than 17 months since thebrutal slayings of Maggie and Paul Murdaughat their sprawling South Carolina hunting lodge, the trial of once-prominent attorneyAlex Murdaughbegan Monday with jury selection.
In July 2022, Murdaugh, 54, was charged with two counts of murder two counts of possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime in connection with the June 7, 2021, shooting deaths of his wife, Maggie, 52, and their youngest son, Paul, 22.
The disgraced lawyer was already being held in jail on a host of financial charges that also got him disbarred.
He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
Alex Murdaugh.Tracy Glantz/The State via AP
Finding impartial jurors in South Carolina Lowcountry will be challenging since the murders received worldwide coverage in newspapers, digital stories, true crime shows, podcasts and documentaries.
Prospective jurors must also have no ties to the Murdaugh family, who are well-known in Colleton County, where the trial will be held.
Murdaugh is a scion of a powerful legal family in the rural county. His father, grandfather and great grandfather were elected prosecutors for generations. His family also founded a prominent law firm that has now been disbanded and renamed.
In the court documents, Senior Assistant Deputy Attorney General Creighton Waters described the contents of the video as “critical to the case” and “important to proving the State’s case in chief.”
The Murdaugh Family.
Waters asked the court to require a representative from Snapchat to testify at the trial, which is expected to last for three weeks, according to the filing.
Judge Clifton Newman signed the request and said a Snapchat representative must appear from the start of trial “until the witness testifies or the case is disposed of,” according to court papers.
Waters and Snapchat did not respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.
Blood Spatter on Shirt?
Murdaugh’s defense team has petitioned the court to exclude a state expert’s testimony from the trial. In a Jan. 18 filing, Murdaugh’s attorneys asked the judge to prevent prosecutors from using any testimony from blood spatter expert Tom Bevel or his associates about blood allegedly found on the white t-shirt Murdaugh was wearing the night of the murders, according to court documents.
Calling this “a lie,” Murdaugh’s attorneys argued that authorities leaked information to the press “to convince the public that Mr. Murdaugh was guilty of the murders before trial” and that the leaked information was “the purported opinion of Tom Bevel of Bevel, Gardner & Associates Inc. in Oklahoma,” the filing says.
His lawyers say prosecutors knew on Aug. 10, 2021, that “confirmatory blood test results were definitely negative for human blood in all areas of the shirt where purported spatter is present,” according to the filing.
The South Carolina Law Enforcement Division “never told Mr. Bevel the shirt definitively tested negative for human blood before Mr. Bevel produced his report,” the filing says.
Bevel’s initial report “correctly” said there was no high-velocity blood spatter on the shirt and that spatter was unlikely to be on the shooter at all, the filing says.
Murdaugh Allegedly Lured Wife to Her Death
On the evening of June 7, 2021,Alex allegedly reached out to his wife Maggie, asking her to meet him at the family’s 1,770-acre estate in the small town of Islandton, S.C.
According to a law enforcement source close to the investigation, Alex allegedly told Maggie that his 81-year-old father, Randolph Murdaugh III, was in failing health and that she needed to see him before he died.
Several sources told PEOPLE Maggie and Alex hadhit a rough patch in their marriage, and she was staying at the family’s beach house on Edisto Island, approximately an hour away from the family’s estate.
The law enforcement source previously told PEOPLE that Maggie initially declined to meet Alex at the family home, suggesting instead that they meet at the hospital. Ultimately, she consented to meet at the property, planning to follow Alex to the hospital in her own vehicle.
On her way to the house, Maggie allegedly messaged a friend, saying that something about her husband’s behavior felt “fishy,” the law enforcement source said. “He’s up to something,” Maggie allegedly wrote to her friend.
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When Maggie arrived at the scene, she left her car running and walked to the dog kennels on the estate where her son,Paul, was taking photos of a dog he was watching for a friend.
It’s unclear what happened next — butMaggieand Paul weregunned downclose to the dog kennels. Paul’s body was found “half in and half out” of the dog kennels, authorities say.
Paul was shot in the chest and head with a shotgun at close range. Maggie was shot multiple times, including one shot in the back and additional shots while she was lying on the ground. She had been shot with 300 Blackout ammo from an AR-style rifle. Both of them were pronounced dead at the scene.
source: people.com
