WALTERBORO, S.C. — “He was the storm,” prosecutor Creighton Waters thundered, pointing at Alex Murdaugh, who is on trial accused of murdering his wife and son. “The storm came for them.”
Outside the courthouse, the sky above Walterboro gave way and great sheets of water fell on the small town that has become host to South Carolina’s trial of the century.
In opening statements delivered Wednesday afternoon, an uncompromising Waters laid out a damning portrait of the largely circumstantial evidence that his team intends to introduce to the jury. But in a deft statement, which wound its way from genteel and self-deprecating to impassioned outrage, defense attorney Dick Harpootlian offered a full-throated defense of Murdaugh, a man that many in South Carolina have already judged as guilty.
