WALTERBORO, S.C. — The gunman who killed Maggie Murdaugh must have been far shorter than Alex Murdaugh, currently on trial for the murders of his wife and son, a gunshot expert testified for the defense Tuesday.
North Carolina-based forensic engineer Mike Sutton said it would be “very unlikely” that the tall, now-lanky Murdaugh could have been Maggie’s shooter who left bullet holes in the walls of the dog kennels, where Murdaugh is accused of shooting his wife and youngest son, Paul, the night of June 7, 2021.
Sutton performed analysis on the bullet trajectories for two holes found outside the kennels, one in a quail pen that was sitting on a table on an exterior wall and another on a dog house sitting on the ground nearby. He testified that he believes both markings came from bullets fired at Maggie with a .300 Blackout AR-style rifle when she was killed outside the kennels, shortly after Paul was killed inside the dog feed room.
Based on the trajectories, as well as the location of Maggie’s body and the shell casings found nearby, Sutton concluded a gunman firing from the hip would have been between 5-foot-2 and 5-foot-4, a full foot shorter than the 6-foot-4 Murdaugh.
“It puts the shooter ... if they were that tall, puts them in an unrealistic shooting position,” Sutton said. “It’s not an aiming position, it’s not a shooting position. It would be something other than a shooting position where you’re on your feet.”
Sutton’s analysis shows that even a shorter gunman would have had to shoot while holding a rifle beside their hip while firing toward the kennel wall. Only that height would line up with shooting close to where Maggie’s body was found and where shell casings suggest the gun was fired, Sutton said.
Sutton said he measured Murdaugh for his analysis and determined Murdaugh’s shooting hand, based on that positioning, would have to be at or below his knee cap.
“It’s unlikely a tall person made that shot,” he said.
The path of shotgun pellets from the weapon used to kill Paul were consistent with a shooter also firing from the hip, Sutton said, but taller than the earlier measurements. Defense attorney Dick Harpootlian suggested the measurements were more consistent with someone around 5-foot-10.
Sutton worked out the position of Paul’s shooter in the feed room by drawing a line through a bullet hole in a window to where a pellet struck a tree behind it.
“Or (someone) moving the gun up or down (to fire),” Sutton said. “Again, there’s a variable here, of course.”
On cross-examination, state prosecutor David Fernandez questioned if Sutton could know the pellet he found in the tree was connected to Paul’s shooting. Sutton said it was a safe assumption because investigators from the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division recovered the other eight pellets fired from the shotgun used in the killing.
Fernandez also repeatedly questioned Sutton about his lack of certification or formal training in firearms or crime scene expertise, prompting repeated replies by an unruffled Sutton that his broad experience in various types of incident and violent crime reconstruction made him well qualified.
Earlier Tuesday, after listening to his mechanical engineering qualifications, Judge Clifton Newman qualified Sutton as an expert witness in three fields, including acoustic analysis, shooting incident reconstruction and vehicle accident reconstruction. Fernandez had no objection to Newman’s qualifying Sutton as an expert witness.
Sutton, who was on the witness stand four hours Tuesday, said he was retained by the defense in mid-September to work on Murdaugh’s defense and was paid $350 an hour for his approximately 40 to 50 hours of work. He said he had not previously worked with Murdaugh’s former law firm, although he was retained by Murdaugh to do an accident reconstruction on a fatal 2019 boat crash involving Paul that killed Mallory Beach.
Expertise questioned
Sutton testified that he also conducted tests at the house to see if guns fired at the kennels would have been audible from inside the house.
He played audio recorded inside Murdaugh’s house as an AR-style rifle was being fired at the kennels, with almost no sound audible.
“You would not be able to hear it,” he said.
Fernandez questioned if Sutton, who said he primarily works on car accidents, was qualified to offer an opinion on the gunshots. Sutton acknowledged he was not an expert on firearms or pathology, but had previously conducted studies of bullet trajectories for his work.
The prosecutor asked if the bullets that made the holes he measured could have ricocheted off something else. Sutton said he did not see any evidence from the crime scene investigation that those bullets had ricocheted off something else. Fernandez asked if he considered a taller shooter could have shot from a kneeling position, while dismissing the idea of a shooter at the height Sutton suggests as “a 12-year-old.” But Sutton said that was the only explanation consistent with the trajectory.
“He still can’t make the quail shot, for example. The muzzle would be above where the hole is,” Sutton said. “The more you back him up, the more it becomes improbable.”
Fernandez questioned if the guns and ammunition fired in Sutton’s test matched those believed to be responsible for the murders of Paul and Maggie. He also questioned if the trees in between the house and the kennels had grown or if the foliage had changed between June 2021 and January 2023, when Sutton conducted his test.
“The wind, the humidity, the trees, you factor all those in, it doesn’t make a difference because the gunshot in the house was so faint you’re just not going to hear it,” Sutton said.
Fernandez also called into question Sutton’s assertion that Murdaugh’s car was speeding up as it left Moselle and did not slow down at a spot in the road where Maggie’s cellphone was found in a grassy area a day on June 8, 2021, a day after the killings. Prosecutors have contended that geolocation data showed Murdaugh slowed down when passing that spot.
During Tuesday’s questioning by Fernandez, South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson, who has been sitting at the prosecution table nearly every day of the trial, could be seen at one point offering suggestions to Fernandez. Asked after court what he told Fernandez, Wilson smiled politely and told a reporter that he would answer that question after the trial was over.
Sutton was one of the defense’s two witnesses on the first full day of defense testimony, along with Murdaugh’s surviving son, Buster, who testified Tuesday morning. Buster and Sutton were the defense’s third and fourth witnesses, respectively, after they called the Colleton County coroner and the Colleton County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson last week.
Before prosecutors rested their case Friday, they called 61 witnesses over 18 days in an attempt to establish through other evidence that Murdaugh is responsible for killing his wife and son.
Although in four weeks prosecutors have presented a small mountain of circumstantial evidence, such as timelines and geolocations of Murdaugh’s movements June 7, 2021, they have not presented any direct evidence, such as a weapon with DNA.
Both weapons purportedly used in the killings have not been located by law enforcement.
Murdaugh’s attorney Harpootlian told Newman on Tuesday the defense team will likely rest Friday, meaning prosecutors could put up any reply witnesses by early next week, to be followed by closing arguments and the judge’s charge to the jury.
Twelve jurors will decide Murdaugh’s fate. On Tuesday, the number of jurors and alternates shrunk to 14, when one juror called in sick. Newman originally had 12 jurors and six alternates. But after two jurors tested positive for COVID-19, the number of alternates is now two.
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(Island Packet reporter Blake Douglas contributed to this report.)
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