The jury in Alex Murdaugh’s high-profile murder trial has visited the scene where his wife Maggie and son Paul were brutally murdered, before they decide the disgraced legal scion’s fate.
The panel – of 12 jurors and two remaining alternates – were taken to the family’s sprawling 1,700-acre Moselle estate on Wednesday morning to see for themselves the dog kennels and feed room where Mr Murdaugh allegedly gunned down his loved ones on 7 June 2021.
Paul was shot twice with a shotgun as he stood in the feed room of the kennels, with the second bullet blowing his brain from its skull.
Maggie was shot four to five times with an AR-15-style rifle a few yards from her son, as she backed into an ATV parked under a hangar.
The jury visit to the grisly scene took place under tight security with Judge Clifton Newman telling jurors that they can’t ask anyone any questions while they are there, including law enforcement, and that they cannot discuss the case with each other during the trip.
The judge also advised them that some things have changed on the property in the aftermath of the murders.
“It has been a year and a half or more since June 7, 2021, since the alleged crime occurred. Things have most likely changed. We’re in a different season of the year,” he said on Tuesday afternoon.
The media was also banned from accompanying jurors on the trip, though a small media pool was allowed to visit the site once the jury has left.
According to a pool report from The Wall Street Journal’s Valerie Bauerlein, the jury visit lasted around 1 hour 20 minutes in total including travel time.
The pool then briefly visited the dog kennels noting that it was “a heavy place to visit” with the feed room feeling “like a haunted place”.
While standing in the centre of the small room, she said she could not see to the left outside of the doorway where the prosecution’s expert witness said the shooter was standing.
The place where Paul’s body fell – outside the feed room – was within eyesight of and just 12 steps away from where Maggie’s body was found, she reported.
Judge Newman agreed to the jury visit on Monday following a request from Mr Murdaugh’s defence attorney Dick Harpootlian.
“We believe it would be useful for the jury to see Moselle,” he said.
Prosecutor Creighton Waters raised an objection that the property has changed in the last 20 months, with trees between the family home and the kennels having grown significantly.
Judge Newman gave the defence a rare win and agreed to arrange the field trip to Moselle.
During the courtroom discussion, Mr Harpootlian also raised concerns around the need for security for the trip after he claimed people had been caught trespassing on the property at the weekend.
He said that Mr Murdaugh’s brother called law enforcement to remove trespassers from Moselle as he noticed people taking selfies in front of the feed room where the brutal murders unfolded.
“There were literally dozens of people at Moselle last weekend trespassing, taking selfies in front of the feed room,” he said, condemning the “carnival attitude” of some members of the public.
After the jury visit, the day’s proceedings resumed in Colleton County Courthouse with the defence and prosecution arguing the charges for how the jury will deliberate.
Then, the jury was brought back in for closing arguments.
After closing arguments, the jury will begin deliberations.
This means that the once-powerful legal dynasty heir may learn his fate before the end of the week.
This comes after the prosecution rested its case on Tuesday after a day of calling rebuttal witnesses to the stand to dispute the theories of the defence’s expert witnesses and to seek to show how Mr Murdaugh continued with his lies on the witness stand.
In a dramatic moment in the courtroom, South Carolina’s top prosecutor pointed a shotgun at a witness’s head in a dramatic attempt to disprove the defence’s theory that Paul was shot in the back of the head at point blank range.
Dr Kenny Kinsey, an Orangeburg County sheriff’s deputy and crime scene expert, returned to the witness stand and rubbished what he described as a “preposterous” and “unscientific” theory, before going into gruesome detail about the extent of injuries he has seen on victims who have suffered a contact wound to the head with a shotgun.
The crime scene expert also tore apart testimony from another defence witness who had claimed that Maggie was murdered by a 5’2” shooter – and not her 6’4” husband.
Jurors also heard from multiple witnesses who suggested that Mr Murdaugh had continued to lie when he took the stand in his own defence last week.
Former friends and colleagues Ronnie Crosby and Mark Ball returned to the stand to dispute Mr Murdaugh’s claim that he distrusted law enforcement – the reason he gave for why he had lied about his alibi – and his testimony about when he touched Maggie’s and Paul’s bodies.
His two former friends said that he clearly told them after the murders that he touched the bodies prior to calling 911.
This came after the defence rested its case on Monday after calling 14 witnesses – including Mr Murdaugh’s surviving son Buster and brother John Marvin – over the course of one week as the legal team seeks to try to convince jurors of Mr Murdaugh’s innocence.
The defence’s case also sought to pick holes in the prosecution’s case and cast doubts on the validity of the investigation, while pushing a theory that two shooters may have carried out the attack.
Key to the defence’s case was the decision to put Mr Murdaugh himself on the stand where he confessed for the first time to lying about his alibi on the night of the murders.
For the past 20 months, the 54-year-old has denied ever being at the dog kennels with his wife and son on the night of 7 June 2021.
In a bombshell moment, he admitted to lying saying he was “paranoid” in part because of a distrust of SLED and because he was encouraged by his lawyer friends not to speak without an attorney present.
But, during a dramatic cross-examination, prosecutor Creighton Waters appeared to catch him in another lie.
He revealed evidence that Mr Murdaugh had lied about his alibi from the moment that the first officer arrived on the scene, appearing to pour cold water on the reason the accused killer gave for lying.
His confession only came after jurors were shown a damning video captured on Paul’s cellphone minutes before the murders, revealing that Paul, Maggie and Mr Murdaugh were all at the kennels together.
During the prosecution’s case jurors heard four weeks of dramatic testimony from 61 witnesses, includign experts, former friends and law firm partners and victims of his financial crimes.
The state’s case covered a trove of circumstantial evidence, including cellphone and car data and numerous apparent holes in Mr Murdaugh’s alibi for the time for the murders – and the damning video taken by Paul.
Jurors also heard about the accused killer’s string of financial crimes – where he stole millions of dollars from his law firm and its clients – and how this fraud scheme was on the brink of exposure at the time of the murders.
As well as the financial crimes, jurors also heard about the bizarre September 2021 botched hitman plot where Mr Murdaugh claims he asked Curtis Eddie Smith to shoot him in the head so his surviving son Buster would get a $12m life insurance windfall.
Prosecutors claim Mr Murdaugh killed his wife and son to distract from his string of alleged financial crimes – at a time when his multi-million-dollar fraud scheme was on the brink of being exposed. They claim the murders – and then the roadside shooting – were all part of a pattern by Mr Murdaugh to avoid accountability and make himself a victim when his lies and schemes were about to come out.
Mr Murdaugh is facing life in prison for the murders of Maggie and Paul and has pleaded not guilty.
Beyond the murders, the brutal double murders brought to light a series of scandals surrounding Mr Murdaugh including unexplained deaths, a multi-million-dollar fraud scheme and a botched hitman plot.
