COLUMBIA, S.C. — The attorneys of accused double murderer Alex Murdaugh will get access to documents that could challenge a key piece of evidence South Carolina prosecutors will use in its attempt to prove the once-prominent Lowcountry attorney brutally murdered his wife and son.
Judge Clifton Newman on Monday ordered the state to turn over to Murdaugh’s defense team any communications prosecutors had with Tom Bevel, an expert witness who examined the shirt Murdaugh was wearing the night of June 7, 2021, when his wife, Maggie, and son, Paul, were shot and killed on the family’s Colleton County estate.
The judge’s order also covers any documents produced by Bevel for the case, including the Photoshop files relating to the white T-shirt Murdaugh was wearing on the night of the murders.
At a hearing on Dec. 9, Murdaugh attorney Dick Harpootlian accused Bevel of changing his initial assessment of the shirt. Harpootlian said Bevel, a retired Oklahoma police captain, had at first told South Carolina law enforcement there was no blood spatter on Murdaugh’s shirt, but then changed his testimony after a visit from State Law Enforcement Division agents.
“We need that information in order to say whether or not that’s voodoo science,” Harpootlian told the judge.
Harpootlian argued the killer would have been drenched in blood, but not only does Murdaugh’s shirt not display such a pattern, but that the chemical process used by the state had left the defense unable to test the shirt themselves, Harpootlian said.
He said defense attorneys want to interview Bevel and South Carolina Law Enforcement Division agents under oath before making a decision on whether to file a motion to exclude the shirt from evidence in the upcoming trial.
A spokesman for the South Carolina attorney general’s office did not immediately return a request for comment Monday, but Newman’s order notes that the state does not object to the disclosure of the materials being sought by the defense.
Murdaugh is scheduled for trial Jan. 23 in Colleton County.
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