Alex Murdaugh asked his housekeeper to clean the family home on the morning after the murders of his wife and son – and then tried to get their stories straight about what clothes he was wearing before the killings.
Blanca Simpson, who worked as the Murdaugh family housekeeper for several years, gave dramatic courtroom testimony in Colleton County Courthouse in Walterboro, South Carolina, on Friday morning where Mr Murdaugh is on trial for shooting dead his wife Maggie and son Paul back on 7 June 2021.
Ms Simpson revealed that Mr Murdaugh had asked her to come to Moselle on 8 June 2021 – hours after the murders – to make the house “the way Maggie liked”.
When she went to the house, she said she noticed several “very unusual” things including pots being in the fridge instead of on the stove or sink and Maggie’s pyjamas and underwear lying “neatly in the middle of the doorway” of the laundry room.
She said it was “very unusual”, saying: “It just didn’t look right to me” because Maggie “didn’t wear underwear with her pyjamas” and the “underwear appeared to be clean not dirty”.
In the shower room, she said she also noticed a light puddle of water, a towel and a pair of khaki pants.
On the morning of 7 June, she told the court she had seen Mr Murdaugh wearing a pair of khaki pants.
She testified that she then put the pants in the wash.
Ms Simpson also testified about the full outfit she saw Mr Murdaugh wearing on the morning of the murders – the khaki pants, a seafoam polo shirt, a blue sports coat and some house shoes.
As the person who cleaned all the Murdaugh family’s clothing and the house, she revealed that she “never” saw the seafoam coloured shirt or the house shoes again after that day.
Two months after the murders – in August 2021 – she testified that Mr Murdaugh brought up what shirt he was wearing on the morning of the murders.
The two of them were at one of the Murdaugh’s properties and he said to her: “I need to talk to you, come here sit down.”
She did and Mr Murdaugh, while pacing, said: “I got a bad feeling ... something’s not right.”
Mr Murdaugh mentioned to her that “there’s a video” and said “you remember the Vinnie Vine shirt... I was wearing that shirt that day”, she testified.
Ms Simpson said that she believed he was trying to make sure that she told law enforcement the same story about he was wearing that fateful day.
“I don’t remember him wearing that shirt that day. I remember the shirt as I fixed the shirt he was wearing,” she said, about the seaform shirt.
“I was confused at first but I know what he was wearing the day he left the house... I was confused... if he was trying to get me to say that if I was asked that that was the shirt he was wearing that day.”
Jurors also heard about phone calls and text messages between Ms Simpson and Maggie – revealing that Mr Murdaugh had insisted both Maggie and Paul come to the property at Moselle on the day of the murders.
Ms Simpson told the court that Maggie texted her saying: “Alex wants me to come home.”
Maggie liked being at the family beach house in Edisto and had been preparing to host a big July 4 gathering there, she said.
In a phone conversation, Maggie also mentioned that Mr Murdaugh wanted her to come to Moselle that day and she seemed a bit “disappointed”, she said.
“She sounded like she didn’t want to come home... she sounded like she was a little disappointed,” she said.
Mr Murdaugh had also asked Paul to come home too because he wanted his son to “fix” something on the property, Ms Simpson testified.
Because of Mr Murdaugh’s request, Ms Simpson said Maggie asked her to cook some food for the three of them to have that night.
Prior to her murder, Maggie had confided in Ms Simpson about concerns with the family’s finances – and concerns that Mr Murdaugh was not being truthful with her about the extent of their situation, she said.
She said that Maggie had asked to speak to her and they went in a room in the home together where Maggie broke down crying.
“She was concerned about the amount of money they were requesting on the lawsuit – $30m is what she told me,” she said.
Maggie told her that she felt “Alex was not being truthful to her about the lawsuit... she said ‘he doesn’t tell me everything’,” testified Ms Simpson.
At the time of the murders, Mr Murdaugh was being sued by the family of Mallory Beach – a 19-year-old woman who died in a 2019 crash in the Murdaugh family boat.
Paul was allegedly drunk driving the boat at the time and crashed it, throwing Beach overboard. Her body washed ashore a week later. Paul was charged with multiple felonies over the boat wreck and was facing 25 years in prison at the time of his murder.
The Beach family sued Mr Murdaugh and a lawsuit hearing was scheduled for the week of the murders. It was postponed following Maggie and Paul’s murders.
As well as the concerns about their finances, Ms Simpson testified that she found Maggie’s wedding ring in her car sometime after the murders.
Under cross-examination, Ms Simpson told the court that she got the impression Mr Murdaugh “adored” his wife.
“He adored her. He loved her. He adored her,” she said.
She said she “never saw them have arguments” only “some minor disagreements” which were about the remodelling of their second home, the Edisto beach house.
However, Ms Simpson damningly became the fourth witness to identify Mr Murdaugh as the voice in the video at the dog kennels moments before the murders.
Paul captured a video on his cellphone at the kennels minutes before he and his mother were shot dead.
Three voices can be heard in it.
Three witnesses have already said the voices are Paul, Maggie and Mr Murdaugh.
The footage was played again. Ms Simpson testified: “It’s Paul, Maggie and Alex.”
Ms Simpson said that she previously thought she heard a fourth voice “at a distance” but after hearing it multiple times insisted she is now sure “there’s only three voices”.
She also said that Maggie would not go down the kennels alone at night because she “was scared” and “it was dark”.
The dramatic testimony comes at the end of a chaotic week which included a bomb threat, a controversial GoFundMe account – and the Murdaugh family’s bad behaviour in court.
This week, Mr Murdaugh’s family members have been warned that they will be thrown out of his murder trial after his surviving son Buster appeared to “flip the bird” at a witness.
Judge Newman has reportedly issued multiple warnings to several members of the disgraced attorney’s family about their behaviour in court, where they have put on a united front since the start of his trial.
The family members have already been moved to the back of the courtroom – and are now only one wrong move away from being booted out altogether.
Maggie and Mr Murdaugh’s surviving son Buster was caught appearing to make a rude gesture to Mark Tinsley as he took the witness stand on Thursday about a lawsuit he brought against the accused killer.
Footage from the courtroom shows Buster apparently flipping the bird as he stared down the witness.
Sources also told FITS News that when Buster was asked to move to the back of the courtroom, he allegedly kicked over a water bottle in anger.
Among some of the other bad behaviour from the powerful family which has reigned over the Hampton County justice system for the last century, Mr Murdaugh’s sister Lynn allegedly passed the disgraced attorney an undisclosed item.
When she was told to stop, Lynn – like Buster – allegedly didn’t take it well, becoming “demonstrative” with court staff.
It also prompted the court to order a drug test for Mr Murdaugh, who has previously revealed he has been addicted to opioids for the last two decades. The results of that drugs test remain unclear.
The refusal of some of the Murdaugh family members to abide by court rules in the high-profile trial is perhaps most intriguing given that the Murdaughs are notoriously familiar with the court system – coming from a long line of local prosecutors.
But, while some of the family members have sparked the ire of the judge, sources said that Mr Murdaugh’s brothers Randy and John Marvin Murdaugh had been nothing but compliant with the court and told court officials they were happy to sit anywhere in the room.
Since the start of Mr Murdaugh’s trial, the family has put on a show of support, sitting in the row directly behind the man accused of killing two of their their loved ones.
However, notably, in the hours where testimony was heard in the absence of the jury, the Murdaughs were nowhere to be seen.
They would then enter the courtroom before the jury was seated.
The ruckus around the Murdaugh family’s courtroom antics is just the latest in a growing list of sagas disrupting the high-profile trial in a week that has included a bomb threat and controversy around the GoFundMe launch for a witness who delivered damning testimony against Mr Murdaugh.
In another dramatic moment in court on Thursday, the defence moved to strike the testimony of attorney Mr Tinsley after it emerged he had donated $1,000 to a GoFundMe set up for Mr Murdaugh’s mother’s caregiver “for her bravery” in testifying at his murder trial.
Mushell “Shelly” Smith gave emotional testimony on Monday, where she cast doubts on part of Mr Murdaugh’s alibi on the night of the murders – revealing he lied about how long he had spent at his sick mother’s house.
Breaking down in tears at points, she described how a “fidgety” Mr Murdaugh showed up at the house for a brief 20-minute visit on 7 June 2021 but later asked her to tell authorities he had been there double the length of time.
In the aftermath of the killings, he then offered to help Ms Smith both financially and with her other job and brought a mystery blue item to leave at his parents’ home, she told jurors.
On Wednesday, Ms Smith’s daughter Rachelle Buckner launched a GoFundMe campaign to “reward her for her bravery and her honesty as it was one of the hardest things she had to do”.
As of Friday morning, the GoFundMe had raised more than $24,000 for Ms Smith – with Mr Tinsley making a $1,000 donation.
Mr Tinsley filed a lawsuit against the Murdaughs on behalf of the family of Mallory Beach, the 19-year-old killed in a boat crash where Paul was allegedly drunk behind the wheel in 2019. He testified how the lawsuit was putting Mr Murdaugh’s finances under increased scrutiny at the time of the murders.
Separate from the murder trial, Mr Murdaugh is now facing around 100 charges from multiple indictments for stealing almost $8.5m from clients dating back to 2011.
The attorney, who has since been disbarred, represented the clients in wrongful death lawsuits before allegedly pocketing the settlement money for himself.
On 3 September 2021 – three months on from the double murders on 7 June – he was confronted by PMPED partners about the stolen money and forced to resign. He was slapped with a string of charges soon after.
Defence attorney Phil Barber asked to strike Mr Tinsley’s testimony due to the fact that he “made a financial payment to a witness in the middle of a trial ... as a reward for her honesty”.
Judge Clifton Newman denied the motion.
The controversy around the GoFundMe came after another dramatic day in the double-murder trial on Wednesday when the courthouse was suddenly evacuated due to a bomb threat.
The bomb threat came in to staff at Colleton County Courthouse just before 12.30pm ET, prompting a sudden evacuation of the entire building.
Multiple sources told FITS News that the threat was called in from Ridgeland, South Carolina, and came from a prison inmate.
By 2.30pm the threat was marked all-clear and testimony resumed at around 3.10pm.
The murders of Maggie and Paul – who were shot dead on the family’s sprawling 1,700-acre estate in Islandton back on 7 June 2021 – catapulted the Murdaugh name to notoriety across the US, bringing to light a series of scandals ncluding unexplained deaths, a multi-million-dollar fraud scheme and a botched hitman plot.
At the time of the murders, Paul was awaiting trial over the death of Mallory Beach – a 19-year-old woman who died in a 2019 crash in the Murdaugh family boat.
Paul was allegedly drunk driving the boat at the time and crashed it, throwing Beach overboard. Her body washed ashore a week later. Paul was charged with multiple felonies over the boat wreck and was facing 25 years in prison at the time of his murder.
The Beach family sued Mr Murdaugh and a lawsuit hearing was scheduled for the week of the murders. It was postponed following Maggie and Paul’s murders.
Days on from the shootings, an investigtion was then reopened into the 2015 death of Stephen Smith, who was found dead in the middle of the road in Hampton County.
The openly gay teenager, 19, had suffered blunt force trauma to the head and his death was officially ruled a hit-and-run. But the victim’s family have long doubted this version of events, with the Murdaugh name cropping up in several police tips and community rumours.
In September 2021 – three months on from the murders – Mr Murdaugh was shot in the head in what turned out to be a botched hitman plot which he had orchestrated with alleged accomplice, distant cousin and drug dealer Curtis Eddie Smith.
He checked into rehab for a 20-year opioid addiction days later.
It then emerged that he had been ousted from his law firm PMPED for stealing millions of dollars from law firm clients.
Separate to the murder trial, Mr Murdaugh is charged with a slew of around 100 charges from multiple indictments for embezzling almost $8.5m from clients in fraud schemes dating back around a decade to 2011.
The attorney, who has since been disbarred, represented the clients in wrongful death lawsuits before allegedly pocketing the settlement money for himself.
An investigation was also reopened into another mystery death connected to the Murdaugh family – that of the Murdaugh’s longtime housekeeper Gloria Satterfield.
She died in 2018 in a mystery trip and fall accident at the family home. Mr Murdaugh then allegedly stole around $4m in a wrongful death settlement from her sons.
Mr Murdaugh, 54, is facing life in prison for the murders of his wife and son. He has pleaded not guilty.
