Alex Murdaugh’s only surviving son Buster gave stoic testimony as his father looked on smiling in the South Carolina courtroom where he is on trial for the murders of his wife Maggie and son Paul.
Buster – who has attended the Colleton County Courthouse in Walterboro, South Carolina, every day since the start of the high-profile trial in a show of support for his father – was the first witness called to the stand by the defence on Tuesday morning.
During calm, controlled testimony, he appeared to water down – but not refute – some key points in the prosecution’s case, including his father’s behaviour on the day of the murders, the clothes he was wearing and the police interview where he appeared to unwittingly confess to killing his wife and son.
Buster said that his father had called him at 9.10pm on 7 June 2021 – just 20 minutes after he allegedly shot and killed Maggie and Paul at the dog kennels of the family’s estate in Islandton.
The 26-year-old testified that his father’s demeanour was “normal” and no different from how he had been earlier in the day.
Buster said Mr Murdaugh told him he was going to visit his mother – Buster’s grandmother – at his parents’ home in Almeda, something he said was quite typical for him to do.
“We would normally make phone calls while we were riding in the car... it was very normal for him to call,” Buster said.
In the aftermath of Maggie and Paul’s murders, Buster said that his father had been “destroyed” and “heartbroken”.
In what marks the first time the 26-year-old has ever spoken out publicly about the murders, he recounted the moment that he learned that his mother and brother were dead.
Buster said that Mr Murdaugh called him that night and asked him if he was sitting down.
“He sounded odd and then he told me that my mom and brother were shot,” he recalled.
At first, Buster said that he just “sat there in shock”. Then he and his girlfriend Brooklynn grabbed some stuff and drove down to Moselle, reaching the property in the early hours of 8 June.
“He was destroyed, he was heartbroken,” Buster said of his father, adding that he could barely speak.
“I walked in the door and saw him and gave him a hug... just broke down.”
Several friends and partners at Mr Murdaugh’s law firm PMPED were also there and they stayed for several hours before Buster, his father, girlfriend and uncle John Marvin went to Mr Murdaugh’s parents’ home in Almeda.
Buster testified that he helped pack his father a bag of clothes from his closet to take with them.
They returned hours later and all showered at the Moselle home, he said – casting doubts on testimony from the Murdaugh housekeeper Blanca Simpson that she noticed “unusual” things in the home on 8 June including a light puddle of water, a towel, a pair of khaki pants and a t-shirt on the ground.
In the aftermath of the murders, Buster said that he was with his father almost all day every day for “a good while” and kept a close eye on him.
He said that there were no instances he could think of when his father disappeared for periods of time – appearing to cast doubts on the state’s suggestion that he disposed of evidence in the aftermath of the murders.
Jurors previously heard from Mr Murdaugh’s mother’s carer Muschelle “Shelly” Smith, who testified that the disgraced attorney showed up at his parents’ home at around 6.30am one morning days after the murders.
He hid a mystery blue item upstairs in the home and then left again, she said.
A blue tarp and a blue rainjacket was found in a search of the home, with the jacket covered in gunshot residue particles.
Prosecutors claim that Mr Murdaugh wrapped the murder weapons in the jacket and intially hid them at his parents’ home.
The guns – a shotgun and a rifle – have never been found.
In one dramatic moment, Buster insisted that his father said “they” and not “I” during a police interview video which prompted speculation that the disgraced legal dynasty heir may have unwittingly slipped up and confessed to the murders.
Video from the 10 June 2021 interview – Mr Murdaugh’s second interview after the murders – was previously played in court, with the sobbing legal scion speaking about the killings.
SLED Special Agent Jeff Croft testified that Mr Murdaugh said: “I did him so bad.”
Buster refuted this testimony, saying that his father said “they did him so bad” after listening to the footage in court.
“He said ‘they did them so bad’,” he said.
Buster told the court that he had heard his father repeatedly say those five words on the night of the murders.
There was been much speculation around whether Mr Murdaugh said “they” or “I” in the audio, which is difficult to distinguish.
Buster’s testimony also called into question the significance of the multiple outfits Mr Murdaugh was seen wearing on the day of the murders – with no bloodied clothing ever found.
He told the court it was “normal” for his father to shower a lot as it gets very hot at Moselle in the summer and Mr Murdaugh was a lot “bigger” – weighing around 250 or 260 pounds – at the time of the murders.
Jurors have previously seen a Snapchat video Paul sent to a friend less than one hour before the murders where he is wearing an entirely different outfit to the bodycam footage after the murders.
In the video, sent at 7.56pm on 7 June 2021, Mr Murdaugh is seen in trousers, loafers and a blue button-down shirt on the grounds of the estate.
In the bodycam footage, the disgraced attorney is wearing a white short-sleeved t-shirt and shorts.
Blanca Simpson, who worked as the Murdaugh family housekeeper for several years and did their laundry, testified that she never saw the clothing Mr Murdaugh was wearing on the morning of the murders again after that day.
Questions have also been raised about this outfit as multiple law enforcement officials testified that Mr Murdaugh and his clothing were “clean” – despite his claims he touched the bloody bodies of his wife and son to check for signs of life.
Addressing the missing clothing, Buster testified that his father “had clothes a lot of places” including the family’s various homes – adding that they never stayed at Moselle after that day.
When asked about his father’s opioid abuse, Buster says he knew “a little bit about the usage of pills” and knew that Maggie and Paul had confronted him about finding pills at some time.
His father had gone to a detox facility around Christmas 2018 and Buster “thought that handled it” but they found pills “a couple more times” after that.
While he said he wasn’t often present for the confrontations, he said he believed his father’s response was usually “apologetic”.
On Friday, jurors were shown a bombshell voicemail message revealing that Maggie and Paul found “bags of pills” in the accused killer’s bag just one month before their murders.
“I am still in EB because when you get here we have to talk. Mom found several bags of pills in your computer bag,” Paul’s message to his father on 6 May 2021 read.
Days later on 3 June 2021 – four days before he allegedly killed his wife and son – Mr Murdaugh sent a voicemail to then-Palmetto State Bank CEO Russell Laffitte asking him for $600,000.
At the time of the murders, Mr Murdaugh claims he was spending up to $60,000 a week to feed a 20-year opioid addiction.
He was also being sued by the family of Mallory Beach, who was killed in a 2019 boat crash.
On the night of 24 February 2019, Paul was allegedly drunk driving the Murdaugh family’s boat with several of his friends on board. The boat crashed into some rocks and threw the passengers overboard.
Everyone survived apart from Mallory Beach, 19, whose body washed up on shore around a week later.
In April 2019, Paul was charged with three felonies over Beach’s death including boating under the influence and was facing up to 25 years in prison. The charges were dropped after his murder.
Mr Murdaugh was also sued by the Beach family, with prosecutors saying that the lawsuit was picking up pace in the days before the murders, and that the disgraced attorney’s finances were about to be exposed because of it.
Buster said that there was a “negative reaction in the community” in the aftermath of the boat crash and it “consumed” his mother, making her “anxious”.
Meanwhile, he said his father did not appear “overly anxious” about the case and the family was supportive of Paul as they believed he wasn’t driving the boat that weekend.
This marks the first time the 26-year-old has ever spoken publicly about the murders of his mother and brother or about his father’s string of alleged crimes.
Buster – the eldest and now only surviving son of Maggie and Mr Murdaugh – has stood by his father throughout the growing number of allegations against him.
Coming as the defence’s first major witness, Buster played into their strategy to present Mr Murdaugh as a loving family man who could never have killed his wife and son in such a brutal fashion – which saw Paul’s brains shot outside of his skull.
The 26-year-old told the court how he lived with his family – Maggie, Paul and Mr Murdaugh – in Beaufort before they moved to Hampton County in 2000.
Growing up, he said that his parents attended “every game” he and Paul ever played in sports and that his father coached their little league teams.
Over time, the Moselle property became the family’s main home – though they would spend much of the summer at the beach home in Edisto Beach.
He, Paul, Maggie and his father would call each other and speak on the phone “pretty much every day”.
“It was very frequent... I spoke to my mom every day multiple times everr day... and my dad and my brother too,” he said.
“And that’s just me. I know they were all talking to each other too.”
The three men would often go hunting together on the 1,700-acre estate, he said.
One Christmas, he and Buster were given a 300 Blackout rifle each as presents.
Buster testified that Paul later told him that his gun was “apparently lost, stolen, taken” and – after that – his brother would always use his.
He said he was not aware Paul ever got a replacement gun and did not see him using a Blackout that wasn’t his.
The killer shot Maggie multiple times with a 300 Blackout rifle – believed to be a replacement rifle that Mr Murdaugh later bought for Paul to replace the one he lost.
SLED agents say that “family guns” were used to kill both victims, with Paul shot twice with a shotgun that was loaded with buckshot and steel birdshot.
Buster testified that he never saw a gun loaded with both types of ammunition and didn’t know anyone who would do that.
Under brief cross-examination, the prosecutor brought up that Mr Murdaugh had suggested his son went hunting at Moselle after his mother and brother were gunned down there.
“He asked if I wanted to go hunting out there again after the murders and suggested I could,” said Buster.
He said that he didn’t want to hunt there and that neither he nor his father had never stayed a single night at Moselle after the murders.
Unlike several other witnesses – and his father at the defence table – Buster did not become emotional at any point during his testimony.
Meanwhile, Mr Murdaugh appeared to smile at his son at several points.
Throughout the weeks-long trial, Buster and several other family members have put on a united front, supporting Mr Murdaugh in court every day.
However, Buster was also notably spotted hugging his aunt Marian Proctor – Maggie’s sister – in court after she testified against his father, including detailing his drug use, an alleged affair years before the murders, and his odd behaviour in the wake of the 7 June 2021 murders.
Throughout the trial, Buster’s own apparently bad behaviour has also been on display inside the courtroom.
Judge Clifton Newman is said to have issued multiple warnings to several members of the Murdaugh family about their behaviour in court and they were told to move to the back of the courtroom.
In court on the week of 6 February, Buster appeared to “flip the bird” at attorney Mark Tinsley as he took the witness stand about the boat crash lawsuit that he brought against Mr Murdaugh.
Sources told FITS News that when Buster was then asked to move to the back of the courtroom, he allegedly kicked over a water bottle in anger.
The judge has warned that he and other family members could be removed from court altogether if there are any further wrong moves.
Buster’s name has also cropped up in a series of other scandals surrounding the once-powerful family.
He is accused of buying alcohol for his younger brother Paul prior to the 2019 fatal boat crash.
Buster’s name has also cropped up in connection with the mysterious death of Stephen Smith – a 19-year-old gay teenager who was found dead at the side of a road in Hampton County in 2015.
His testimony marked the first major witness for the defence, which began its case on Friday afternoon.
During the state’s case, Mr Murdaugh’s attorneys have hinted at a range of theories they plan to present – including that there was two killers and that the murders were tied to a local drugs gang.
Jurors have so heard four weeks of dramatic testimony from 61 prosecution witnesses covering 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.
The final state witness SLED Agent Peter Rudofski laid out a detailed timeline of both the final movements of the two victims – and the movements of their accused killer.
Among the timeline was newly-obtained car data which placed Mr Murdaugh’s car at the spot where his wife’s phone was later found dumped – before he quickly sped away from the scene.
It also showed that he stayed just 21 minutes at his parents’ home that night – less than half the 45 minutes to an hour he claimed to police.
Bombshell testimony from his mother’s carer Muschelle “Shelly” Smith previously disputed Mr Murdaugh’s alibi, saying that he showed up at his sick mother’s house for only 20 minutes that night – before telling her to tell authorities he was there double the length of time.
A cellphone video captured by Paul minutes before the murders also appears to place Mr Murdaugh at the murder scene.
Prosecutors claim that Mr Murdaugh shot dead Maggie and Paul by the dog kennels of the family’s sprawling estate in Islandton, in order to distract from his string of alleged scandals and financial crimes.
Mr Murdaugh, 54, is facing life in prison for the murders of his wife and son. He has pleaded not guilty.
