Alex Murdaugh broke down in tears on the witness stand as he described the moment that he claims he discovered the bloodied bodies of his wife Maggie and son Paul.
The disgraced heir to a powerful legal dynasty took the witness stand in Colleton County Courthouse in Walterboro, South Carolina, on Thursday morning.
In dramatic testimony, the accused killer sobbed as he faced the jury and repeated the same phrase he was heard making on the night of the 7 June 2021 murders: “It was so bad.”
“My boy was lying face down... I could see his brain laying on the sidewalk. I didn’t know what to do,” he said.
During questioning from his defence attorneys, Mr Murdaugh continued to insist that he is innocent of the accusations – that he shot Paul twice with a shotgun and then gunned down his wife multiple times with an AR-15-style rifle.
Instead, Mr Murdaugh claimed that he drove down to the kennels of the sprawling family estate and saw the two victims lying on the ground as he pulled up.
Sobbing, he testified how he had touched both of the victims, how Paul’s cellphone “popped out” of his pocket, described seeing his son’s brain shot out of his head – and said that to some extent he is “not sure exactly what I did”.
“I jumped out of my car... I’m not sure exactly what I did,” he said on arrival at the kennels.
He said he went back to the car and called 911, and was on the phone to the dispatcher while touching both his wife and son’s bodies.
“I was trying to tend to Paul. I was trying to tend to Maggie,” he said. “I was going between them.”
When asked about Paul’s bodies, he kept repeating “so bad” and wept.
“I know I tried to check him for a pulse. I know I tried to turn him over,” he said.
Jurors have previously heard testimony from multiple law enforcement officers on the scene that – despite his claims that he touched the victims’ bodies – Mr Murdaugh did not appear to have any blood on his hands or clothing.
Bodycam footage from the first officer on the scene also shows him dressed in a clean white t shirt and the shirt did not test positive for any blood.
As jurors have previously heard, the crime scene was especially violent and bloody, with Paul’s brain shot out of his skull and both he and Maggie lying in pools of their own blood, fuelling the prosecution’s theory that Mr Murdaugh killed his wife and son and then changed his clothing – disposing of the bloody clothes.
When asked why he tried to turn Paul over, Mr Murdaugh said: “I don’t know. I don’t know why I tried to turn him over.
“I tried to turn him over, grabbed him by the belt loop and tried to turn him over,” he said.
Mr Murdaugh volunteered the information that, as he tried to move Paul, his son’s phone “popped out” of his pocket.
“And when I did, his phone popped out,” he said.
“And when it did I picked it up and put it back down.”
The 911 call, Mr Murdaugh made at 10.06pm that night, was also played in court.
Mr Murdaugh is accused of gunning down his loved ones in a horrific fashion on the grounds of the family’s 1,700-acre estate in Islandton, South Carolina, back on 7 June 2021. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
The decision for Mr Murdaugh to testify comes as the defence plans to wrap up its case on Friday – a case that seeks to present the alleged killer and financial fraudster as a loving family man who would never have murdered his wife and son.
On Thursday morning, he confirmed that he had made his decision.
“I am going to testify. I want to testify,” he defiantly told Judge Clifton Newman.
So far, jurors have heard from 10 defence witnesses including experts who testified about mistakes in the preservation of crime scene evidence, a ballistics expert who claimed Maggie’s shooter was 5’2” tall and not the 6’4” Mr Murdaugh, and the accused killer’s surviving son Buster.
This comes after jurors have heard four weeks of dramatic testimony from the prosecution, presenting Mr Murdaugh as a serial liar who stole millions from his own law firm and friends, and orchestrated situations to paint himself as a victim when his alleged crimes were on the brink of exposure.
In total, 61 prosecution witnesses covered 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 decision to put Mr Murdaugh on the stand came down to the wire, with his defence attorneys paying him a jailhouse visit on Wednesday night.
Attorneys Dick Harpootlian and Jim Griffin had previously said that their client wanted to testify in his own defence but were dealt a – not entirely unexpected – blow when the judge refused to limit the scope of his cross-examination.
On Wednesday morning, Mr Griffin asked Judge Clifton Newman to bring an order preventing the prosecution from cross-examining Mr Murdaugh about his string of alleged financial crimes should he take the stand.
Mr Griffin said the legal team had not yet decided whether or not Mr Murdaugh would testify in his murder trial but that they wanted the financial crimes to be off-limits if he did.
Prosecutor Creighton Waters argued that the cross-examination is “wide open” to all the alleged crimes – including the financial crimes – if Mr Murdaugh takes the stand. Judge Newman sided with the state, refusing to issue an order ahead of the testimony.
“For the court to issue a blanket order limiting the scope of cross-examination, that’s unheard of to me,” he said.
Mr Murdaugh is likely to face a tough cross-examination as he will be grilled about several discrepancies in his alibi.
Prosecutors allege that 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.
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.
Their attorney had also filed a motion to compel, which prosecutors say would have exposed Mr Murdaugh’s ruinous finances.
The 10 June hearing was then postponed following Maggie and Paul’s murders.
Prosecutors claim that Mr Murdaugh’s multi-million-dollar fraud scheme was also on the brink of exposure, with his law firm PMPED closing in on his alleged theft.
That very morning, the CFO had confronted him about $792,000 worth of missing payments.
Mr Murdaugh had allegedly stolen the money and could not pay it back.
Jurors have heard testimony from several law firm partners and clients about how Mr Murdaugh stole millions over a decade-long fraud scheme.
In a blow to the defence – and a bonus to the prosecution’s case presenting Mr Murdaugh as a master manipulator – jurors also heard about the bizarre botched hitman plot.
On 3 September 2021, Mr Murdaugh’s law firm partners confronted him that they had uncovered his sprawling theft from the company. He was forced to resign.
Then, three months on from the murders on 4 September 2021, Mr Murdaugh was suddenly shot in the head along the side of a road in Hampton County.
He survived and called 911, claiming he was ambushed in a drive-by shooting while he was changing a tire on his vehicle.
But, Mr Murdaugh’s story about the incident quickly unravelled.
One week later on 13 September, he confessed to law enforcement that he had orchestrated the whole saga, paying an alleged hitman to shoot and kill him in an assisted suicide plot so that his surviving son Buster could get a $10m life insurance windfall.
He told investigators that he had paid Curtis “Eddie” Smith – a former law firm client, distant cousin and allegedly his drug dealer – to carry out the shooting. Both he and Mr Smith were arrested and charged over the incident.
The plot, described as the “side of the road” incident, marked one of the most bizarre twists in the sprawling scandal which has enveloped the disgraced heir to a prominent South Carolina legal dynasty over the past 20 months.
Prosecutors say this fits the pattern of Mr Murdaugh orchestrating a crime to make himself a victim – and to get out of being held accountable for his actions.
The brutal double murders brought to light a series of scandals surrounding Mr Murdaugh including unexplained deaths, the multi-million-dollar fraud scheme and the botched hitman plot.
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.
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.
The 54-year-old is facing life in prison on the murder charges.
