Disgraced legal scion Alex Murdaugh insisted he did not intentionally search for a local restaurant online in the minutes after he reported the murders of his wife and son to 911 dispatchers.
Testifying in his own defence on Thursday, Mr Murdaugh contested the state’s timeline report of the evening on 7 June 2021, when Paul and Maggie Murdaugh were shot dead on their property in Islandton, South Carolina.
Agents with the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) had previously shared records from the disbarred lawyer’s phone with the court. The information collected from 6pm to 11pm on the day of the shootings showed a bizarre search by Mr Murdaugh at 10.40pm.
The state had argued that just 34 minutes after alerting 911 dispatchers that he had found his wife and son’s bodies by the property’s dog kennels — and 15 minutes after the first deputy arrived on the scene — the accused killer searched “Whaley’s Edisto” on his Safari browser.
Mr Murdaugh’s attorney Jim Griffin asked him if he had intentionally searched for the restaurant, which is nearly an hour and a half away from the Murdaugh hunting state, while Paul and Maggie were lying dead just feet away from him.
“I did not. Whaley’s is a restaurant that we ate at, a lot of times would get take out from,” Mr Murduagh said. “I’m assuming it was on my search history ... and obviously, I was trying to call people so I [mistakenly] hit that. I wasn’t trying to do any Google search.”
Mr Murdaugh testified that while trying to reach close friends and relatives to deliver the tragic news, he accidentally called a photographer whose services he had used before. He also said he was not aware of text messages from a group chat that were delivered and marked as read by him in the immediate aftermath of the murders.
Phone records also show that Mr Murdaugh called Maggie at 10.03pm, just three minutes before calling 911.
He spoke with dispatchers until 10.17pm and the first deputy arrived at the scene at 10.25pm.
From the time he hung up the call with 911 dispatchers until law enforcement arrived, Mr Murdaugh called at least three family members or close friends. Cellphone records allegedly place Mr Murdaugh at the dog kennels minutes earlier – when the suspect had “told everyone he was never there”.
He then called his surviving son Buster at 10.44pm, with the call lasting eight seconds.
During his testimony at the Colleton County Courthouse on Thursday, Mr Murdaugh recounted making the gruesome discovery on the night of 7 June.
“I’m not exactly sure of what I did,” Mr Murdaugh said as he broke down in tears. “I know I got out of my car and then went back in my car to call 911.”
“I was trying to tend to Paw Paw, I was trying to tend to Maggie. I was going back and forth between them.”
Mr Murdaugh said he tried checking for a pulse and turning Paul’s body, but acknowledged that he knew he was dead.
“I don’t know why I tried to turn him over. I mean, my boy is laying face down and I knew he was gone the way he was,” he said through sobs. “I could see his brain laying on the sidewalk, I did not know what to do.”
Mr Murdaugh also addressed a Snapchat video recorded by Paul around 8.40pm on the night of the murders, which placed him in the dog kennels shortly before the shooting. The accused killer confessed that he had lied to investigators when he said he wasn’t at the kennels because he had developed “paranoia” due to his opioid addiction.
“As my addiction evolved over time, I would get any situations or circumstances where I would get paranoid thinking,” he said. “It might be a look somebody gave me, it might be a reaction somebody had to something I did, it might be a policeman following me in a car.”
“That night, June 7th, after finding Maggs and Paul … I wasn’t thinking clearly. I don’t think I was capable of reason. And I lied about being down there. And I’m so sorry that I did.”
As jurors have previously heard, the crime scene was especially violent and bloody, with Paul’s brain shot out of his skull and both he and Maggie lying in pools of their own blood, fuelling the prosecution’s theory that Mr Murdaugh killed his wife and son and then changed his clothing – disposing of the bloody clothes.
The jury also heard testimony from multiple law enforcement officers on the scene that – despite his claims that he touched the victims’ bodies – Mr Murdaugh did not appear to have any blood on his hands or clothing.
The decision for Mr Murdaugh to testify comes as the defence plans to wrap up its case on Friday – a case that seeks to present the alleged killer and financial fraudster as a loving family man who would never have murdered his wife and son.
So far, jurors have heard from 11 defence witnesses including experts who testified about mistakes in the preservation of crime scene evidence, a ballistics expert who claimed Maggie’s shooter was 5’2” tall and not the 6’4” Mr Murdaugh, and the accused killer’s surviving son Buster.
In total, 61 prosecution witnesses covered a trove of circumstantial evidence, including cellphone and car data, a damning video allegedly placing Mr Murdaugh at the crime scene and apparent holes in his alibi for the time for the murders.
Mr Murdaugh’s decision to testify will also give the prosecution a major opportunity to cross-examine him on the plethora of scandals that surround the murders of his son and wife.
Mr Murdaugh, once a scion of a legal dynasty in his home state, is now facing at least 100 other criminal charges over a string of financial fraud allegations from his former law firm. He has also allegedly conspired to pay a hitman to shoot him dead so that his surviving son Buster would inherit a $10m life insurance.
The 54-year-old is facing life in prison on the murder charges.
