Disgraced legal scion Alex Murdaugh broke down in tears as an expert testifying in his murder trial described how his son and wife were brutalised by bullets.
On the sixteenth day of Mr Murdaugh’s double murder trial on Monday, prosecutors called forensic pathologist Dr Ellen Riemer to take the stand and explain the degree of the injuries suffered by Paul and Maggie Murdaugh when they were shot to death on the night of 7 June 2021.
Dr Riemer, who performed the autopsies, went into great detail while describing how Paul was left standing after he was shot the first time, but a second bullet blew the inside of his head, leaving almost all his brain matter detached from his body.
She also told how multiple bullets ripped through Maggie before she was struck by a fatal shot.
Cameras in the courtroom were requested not to show pictures of the autopsy due to their graphic nature.
Mr Murdaugh, who is accused of pulling the trigger, became emotional and wiped away tears as Dr Riemer used a prosecutor as a prop to show where the bullets entered and travelled through the bodies.
“It’s horrible, I know,” Dr Riemer told jurors.
Chris Slobogin, the director of the criminal justice program at Vanderbilt University, told The Independent that the emotion shown by Mr Murdaugh could potentially help his case.
“It might make the jury sympathetic if they think his grief stems solely [from] his loss and not from his role in causing it,” Mr Slobogin said.
Throughout four weeks of trial, the prosecution has argued that Mr Murdaugh shot Maggie and Paul dead at the family’s sprawling 1,700-acre property in Islandton, South Carolina, to distract from his growing financial and legal scandals.
The disbarred lawyer has denied those allegations and pleaded not guilty to the murder charges last June.
A source close to the defence told News 3 on Monday that Mr Murdaugh is expected to take the stand in his own defence, possibly next week. If the strategy comes to fruition, it would be the first time Mr Murdaugh publicly speaks about the murders.
Mr Slobogin said that the legal strategy is often “a tactic of last resort” by the defence, but could also work in Mr Murdaugh’s favour.
“If Murdaugh can’t explain away all the prosecution’s evidence, lets slip any incriminating or contradictory statement, or gets defensive or angry, the jury is likely to be very tough on him,” he said. “Plus, the prosecution can challenge him with prior crimes or inconsistent statements he’s made in the past. But a defendant who appears highly credible can also turn the tide.”
In her graphic retelling of the injuries on Monday, Dr Riemer explained that she determined Paul was likely standing with his face tilted towards his killer at the time he was shot. Dr Riemer said that Paul was likely shot first in the chest and remained standing before a gunshot wound to the left shoulder went up into his head and instantly killed him.
Maggie first suffered a gunshot wound to her left breast, and the bullet travelled upward to the left side of her face. The second shot went through her kidney, which probably caused her to bend over and while in that position, she was shot in the chest and to the back of her head, Dr Riemer said.
The forensic psychologist noted that while Paul was killed with a shotgun, the murderer used a rifle in Maggie’s attack.
During cross-examination on Tuesday, Dr Reimer said that stippling was found on Paul’s chest wound, indicating the shot was fired from within three feet, but not closer than six inches. There was no soot, which would indicate a closer shot.
Mr Murdaugh’s defence also brought up prosecutors’ past remarks saying that blood spatter was found on the shirt that Mr Murdaugh was wearing on the night of the murders. But South Carolina Law Enforcement Division agent Sara Zapata on Monday said she submitted her HemaTrace test stating that no blood was found on the white shirt on 10 November 2021.
Mr Murdaugh’s attorney asked Ms Zapata: “Do you think that there could be blood spatter without blood?”
Ms Zapata said that during a meeting in April 2022, months after she submitted her results, the Attorney General’s Office asked her whether the HemaTrace could come back with a false positive. She also said she was not aware of media reports referencing the purported blood spatter.
Prosecutors have seemingly abandoned the blood-spatter argument, which was thought to be strong evidence in the case. Instead, the state has argued that Mr Murdaugh may have changed his clothes before police arrived as he claimed to have moved the bodies, but no blood was found in the white t-shirt.
Blood was found on the steering wheel of Mr Murdaugh’s Chevy Suburban, SLED agent Rachel Nguyen also testified on Monday. Mr Murdaugh drove the vehicle on the night of the murders to his mother’s home.
During Ms Zapata’s cross-examination, the defence argued that the blood could have gotten there after Mr Murdaugh checked his wife’s body and returned to the vehicle to retrieve a weapon.
Muschelle “Shelly” Smith, who worked as a caregiver to Mr Murdaugh’s mother Libby from October 2019, previously told jurors about Mr Murdaugh’s unusual behaviour both on the night of the murders and in the days that followed.
She testified that a “fidgety” Alex Murdaugh showed up at his sick mother’s house between 8.30pm and 9.30pm on the night of 7 June 2021 – then left 20 minutes later.
She testified that it was “unusual” for him to visit at night and he was “fidgety”.
A few days after the murders, she testified that Mr Murdaugh spoke to her about his visit that night, telling her to tell authorities that he had stayed at his parents’ house for double the length of time that he had.
“I was here 30 to 40 minutes,” she said he told her.
The conversation left her feeling “nervous”, she said – so much so that she called her brother who is a police officer to relay what he had said to her.
The double murder trial is far from Mr Murdaugh’s only legal problem. Besides the case, Mr Murdaugh is facing at least 100 other criminal charges over a string of financial fraud allegations.
Three months on from the murders – on 4 September 2021 – Mr Murdaugh allegedly conspired to pay a hitman to shoot him dead so that Buster would inherit a $10m life insurance windfall.
He initially claimed he was ambushed in a drive-by shooting while changing a tyre on his vehicle, but his story quickly unravelled and he confessed to orchestrating the plot.
Mr Murdaugh and his alleged co-conspirator Curtis Smith were arrested and charged over the incident.
One day before the shooting, Mr Murdaugh had been confronted by his law firm PMPED for allegedly stealing millions of dollars from clients.
He is now charged with more than 100 counts from multiple indictments alleging he stole nearly $8.5m from clients at his law firm in fraud schemes going back a decade.
The attorney, who has since been disbarred, allegedly represented the clients in wrongful death settlements before pocketing the money for himself.
Alleged victims include family members of Gloria Satterfield family, the Murdaugh’s longtime housekeeper who died in a mysterious trip and fall accident at the family home in 2018.
At the time, her death was regarded as an accidental fall – though the investigation was reopened after Maggie and Paul’s murders.
The housekeeper is one of a series of other mystery deaths also surrounding the Murdaughs.
Stephen Smith, 19, was found dead in the middle of the road in Hampton County, South Carolina. The openly gay teenager 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.
An investigation has also been reopened into his death.
At the time of Paul’s death, he was also awaiting trial over the death of 19-year-old Mallory Beach who died in a 2019 boat crash where Paul was allegedly drunk driving behind the wheel. He was charged with boating under the influence and faced up to 25 years in prison but was killed before his trial.
The Murdaugh family reached a wrongful death settlement with the Beach family earlier in January.
