WALTERBORO, S.C. — Judge Clifton Newman ruled Wednesday that jurors in the Alex Murdaugh double-murder trial can hear testimony about Murdaugh’s 2021 Labor Day botched roadside suicide attempt, an unexpected reversal of a ruling he issued the same morning.
This ruling, a win for the prosecution, will allow the state to present to the jury still more evidence of Murdaugh’s alleged criminal schemes, this one involving a purported attempt by Murdaugh to have an accomplice, Curtis “Eddie” Smith, kill him so Murdaugh’s son Buster could collect $10 million in insurance proceeds.
But earlier Wednesday at the Colleton County courthouse, Murdaugh’s defense lawyers likely scored points with the jury during a lengthy cross examination of South Carolina Law Enforcement Division special agent David Owen. Owen admitted to flaws in SLED’s investigation, such as not carrying out a search for the death weapons at Murdaugh’s parents’ house on the night Maggie and Paul Murdaugh were killed.
Under defense attorney Jim Griffin’s questioning, Owen also admitted that he had deliberately deceived Murdaugh about evidence recovered from the murder scene and mischaracterized that same evidence to a Colleton County grand jury.
“Would you agree that was an opportunity missed?” Griffin asked Owen, stressing that Murdaugh had said he was at his parents’ house 15 miles away when his wife and son were killed. If he were the killer, couldn’t Murdaugh have hidden the weapons — a shotgun and an assault rifle — on their property? Griffin said.
It was “probably missed,” Owen replied tensely.
Owen also admitted that he testified to a Colleton County Grand Jury that Murdaugh’s shirt contained multiple areas of blood spatter. This was despite a HemaTrace test, which tests for the presence of human blood, coming back negative. Owen said that while the report was in his email, he did not know about it until November 2022, after he testified before the grand jury.
“I did not see that report,” Owen said. “I was not made aware of its existence.”
Lead case agents such as Owen, the state’s 57th witness, often testify toward the end of a prosecution’s case and are supposed to weave a hopefully unassailable narrative of key evidence gathered during an investigation. The aim is to show the jury a full and compelling version of events in hopes of persuading them to deliver a guilty verdict.
Murdaugh, 54, is accused of killing Maggie, 52, and Paul 22, on the night of June 7, 2021, at the family’s 1,770-acre estate, called Moselle, in rural Colleton County. There were no witnesses, and the state’s case has been based entirely on a host of circumstantial evidence the state contends ties Murdaugh inextricably to the crime.
Owen spent most of Wednesday on the witness stand, laying out an overview of the state’s investigation of the deaths of Maggie and Paul and describing how over time, evidence gathered by detectives pointed increasingly to Murdaugh as the killer.
That evidence included a 58-second video on Paul’s cellphone that wasn’t discovered by investigators until March of last year, 10 months after the killings. That video, taken at Moselle’s dog kennels at 8:44 p.m. on June 7, 2021, shows Paul grappling with an unruly dog as two voices are heard in the background. Numerous witnesses have identified those voices as Maggie’s and Alex’s.
The video is crucial for prosecutors, because Alex repeatedly told investigators he didn’t go to the kennel area until after 10 o’clock that night, when he discovered their bodies. Other evidence suggests Paul and Maggie were killed shortly after the video was made.
Evidence like Paul’s video made Murdaugh the first and only suspect, Owen testified.
“Were there any other credible leads that you investigated that led you to anybody other than Alex Murdaugh?” prosecutor John Meadors asked.
“Not credible, no sir,” Owen said.
A centerpiece of Owen’s testimony was a video recording from Aug. 11, 2021, two months after Maggie and Paul were killed. It was the third time Murdaugh had sat for a formal interview with SLED. Murdaugh brought a longtime friend and lawyer, Cory Fleming, with him. SLED agent Jeff Croft also attended, repeatedly probing Murdaugh’s whereabouts the day of the murders.
Midway through the interview, Owen asked Murdaugh to confirm that he was not, as he had told them twice already, at the kennels between dinner and when he returned from visiting his mother.
“Yes sir,” Murdaugh replied, confirming that he was not at the kennels.
Referencing a June 8, 2021, conversation he had with Paul’s friend Rogan Gibson, Owen said Gibson had said Murdaugh’s voice could be heard in the background of a call Paul made from the kennels before 9 p.m.
“Rogan Gibson had asked me if I was up there, that he thought it was me,” Murdaugh replied. Asked directly if he had been at the kennels that night, Murdaugh responded, “At 9 o’clock? No sir, not if my times are right.”
Then who did Murdaugh think Gibson heard on the phone?
“I have no idea,” Murdaugh said.
Owen also pressed Murdaugh about the family’s guns, including where they were kept, if any were missing and what ammunition was loaded in them. A gun taken from the gun rack had both bird shot and buck shot in it, the same load that killed Paul, Owen said.
Murdaugh told Owen that he wouldn’t normally load multiple kinds of shot.
On cross-examination, Owen was confronted by defense attorney Jim Griffin, who said that no shotguns with both bird shot and buck shot had been recovered from the home.
“I’m allowed to use trickery to elicit a response,” Owen said.
Owen later admitted that he had told a Colleton County Grand Jury that he had found guns loaded with both buck shot and bird shot.
Griffin accused Owen of focusing on Murdaugh to the exclusion of all other potential suspects, among them Eddie Smith, who Griffin said was skimming money from the $50,000 a week Murdaugh paid him for drugs. Owen said he was unaware of Smith doing that.
Griffin also argued that Owen failed to follow up on evidence like DNA found under Maggie’s fingernails that belonged to an unidentified male.
The Aug. 11 Interview
During that Aug. 11, 2021, interview, Fleming — Murdaugh’s friend and attorney — questioned whether SLED was considering Murdaugh as a suspect in the case.
“I’m uncomfortable with you asking him questions as a suspect because I came here with the thought you were going to be telling him where you are in the investigation,” Fleming is heard saying in the video.
In the video, Owen says the purpose of the interview is to further their investigation, and that he had previously explained to Murdaugh, “any homicide investigation starts with the closest person, or the person who found the deceased.”
Throughout the interview, Murdaugh repeatedly emphasized that he wanted to cooperate and asked investigators if they would share information with Maggie’s family.
Asked directly if he killed his wife and son, Murdaugh said no. Asked if he knew who did, Murdaugh again said no.
“Do you think I killed Paul?” Murdaugh asked. “Do you think I killed Maggie?”
“I have to go where the evidence and the facts take me,” Owen replied. “And I don’t have anything that points to anybody else at this time.”
Owen asked Murdaugh when he changed clothes from the outfit he was seen wearing in a Snapchat video Paul shot earlier in the day.
“I’m not sure. What time of day was that?” Murdaugh asked.
When told the video might have been shot about 7 or 8 p.m., Murdaugh said he must have changed when he got back to the house.
Agents also asked Murdaugh about why Maggie did not go with him to visit his mother that night. Maggie’s sister, Marian Proctor, testified that was the main reason Maggie had gone back to the house that night from the Murdaughs’ Edisto Beach house, where she preferred to stay.
“I don’t remember if she planned to ride with me,” Murdaugh said. “Maybe she told me that. I don’t recall that specifically. She didn’t normally go over there.”
Murdaugh told investigators he was at his mother’s house for 45 minutes to an hour.
On the stand, Owen confirmed that by this point, he had already spoken to Murdaugh’s mother’s caregiver, Mushelle “Shelly” Smith, who earlier testified Murdaugh had only been in the house for 15 to 20 minutes.
At the end of the interview, an emotional Murdaugh asked Owen, “I would like to know exactly what happened.”
“Me too,” Owen replied.
Roadside shooting evidence will now be presented
Newman first ruled Wednesday the jury could not hear testimony related to the 2021 Labor Day weekend shooting, saying in his ruling that the incident “doesn’t survive the relevancy test.”
“I believe to allow this evidence is a bridge too far,” Newman said.
Hours later, he changed his decision, saying the defense opened the door after Griffin cross-examined Owen about possible connections between the shootings at Moselle and the Sand Hill gang, a local drug dealing gang, and their successors, the Cowboys. He also asked if Owen had looked into Curtis Eddie Smith, a distant cousin of Murdaugh’s.
Smith has been charged in state grand jury indictments with being a go-between between Murdaugh and drug dealers in Colleton County. Over the years, Murdaugh gave Smith millions of dollars to buy drugs for Murdaugh, and much of that money is unaccounted for, prosecutors have said in court.
The 2021 Labor Day weekend shooting occurred a day after Murdaugh was fired from his law firm. Murdaugh initially told investigators he was shot by a stranger on the side of the road while he was changing a tire, but ultimately acknowledged he had asked someone to kill him in order to provide a life insurance payout for his surviving son, Buster.
On Wednesday morning, Newman first ruled he wouldn’t allow the shooting incident to be presented to the jury.
Lead prosecutor Creighton Waters contends the initial story of the Labor Day weekend shooting was part of a plan to tie Murdaugh’s shooting to the murders of his wife and son three months earlier and convince the world both were the work of unknown assailants targeting the family.
“This case is intricate and complex on a scale the rest of us have never seen,” Waters told Newman. “It doesn’t really matter what happened on the side of the road. What’s relevant is what the defendant said about it and the fact that it was not true.”
Defense attorney Dick Harpootlian contended the incident was simply an attempted suicide in response to Murdaugh’s firing, and that he quickly admitted what really happened when he believed it might detract from the search for Paul and Maggie’s killers.
“He was confronted on Friday, he was fired on Friday,” the day before the shooting, Harpootlian argued. “His thinking was to get his son Buster Murdaugh an ... insurance payout that he thought would be excluded by a suicide exception.”
Under the state’s theory of the murders, Murdaugh killed his wife and son in response to pressure that various financial schemes Murdaugh was allegedly involved in would be uncovered. If that were the case, Harpootlian argued, then after Murdaugh was fired from his law firm, “he would have killed Buster.”
On Tuesday, Proctor — Maggie’s sister — testified that she initially believed the murders were related to a fatal 2019 boat crash that Paul was involved in. But after the Labor Day shooting, she came believe there was a different motive for the murders.
Newman has allowed other testimony about Murdaugh’s alleged financial crimes, in which the disbarred attorney has been accused of stealing millions of dollars from his law partners and clients.
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