Dramatic footage has revealed Alex Murdaugh being confronted by law enforcement about wild inconsistencies in his alibi in a police interview two months on from the murders of his wife Maggie and son Paul.
Footage of the 11 August 2021 interview with Mr Murdaugh was played in court on Wednesday as the prosecution nears the end of its case in the disgraced legal scion’s double murder trial.
In the interview, which has never been seen before, the discrepancies between Mr Murdaugh’s version of events on the night of 7 June 2021 and the trove of evidence and witness testimony revealed at his murder trial was laid bare.
Among the inconsistencies were: how long Mr Murdaugh spent at his mother’s home that night; whether or not he went to the dog kennels; the different clothes he was wearing; the timeline of when he was at his law firm; and the reason Maggie had gone to the family estate that day.
The footage also reveals Mr Murdaugh’s apparent lack of surprise when he was told for the first that his wife and son had been murdered by the family’s own guns.
During testimony in Colleton County Courthouse in Walterboro, South Carolina, on Wednesday, SLED Special Agent David Owen was asked to describe Mr Murdaugh’s reaction when he told him “family guns” had been used in the killings.
“Nothing,” the agent testified.
Agent Owen, the lead agent in the murder case, told the court that the interview came about when Mr Murdaugh called him in late July asking for his SUV back because he wanted his golf clubs.
He said he asked Mr Murdaugh to come to see him the next day as he wanted to give him an update on the case and ask him further questions – but the accused killer declined saying he was going on vacation.
Several days later, Mr Murdaugh called him back and they arranged for him to come in for the interview on 11 August.
The interview – coming almost exactly two months on from the murders – was attended by Agent Owen, SLED Senior Special Agent Jeff Croft, Mr Murdaugh and Corey Fleming.
Mr Fleming is a defence attorney and friend of Mr Murdaugh who is now also charged with a string of financial crimes in connection to the accused killer.
At the start of the interview, Mr Fleming raised concerns with the law enforcement’s questioning of Mr Murdaugh – saying that they were there for an update in the case and did not believe he was submitting for questions.
“I thought we were here to get an update on what’s going on,” he said.
“Are you asking him questions to further your investigation or are you asking him questions because you think he’s a suspect?”
The agent said he had questions he wanted answering to help further the investigation.
Mr Murdaugh however insisted he was happy to answer questions, saying he wanted to do “anything to help” the murder investigation.
During the interview that followed, Mr Murdaugh outlined his alleged movements on the day of the murders – movements that have since been picked apart by prosecutors at trial.
Here are some of the main discrepancies:
Timeline for movements in day
Mr Murdaugh claimed that he had gone to the office of his law firm PMPED on the morning of 7 June 2021, where he worked on the lawsuit over the 2019 fatal boat crash.
He told the officers he left his office and arrived back at the family estate on Moselle Road at around 5.30pm.
He said that he had got home around the same time as Paul whereas Maggie came home hours later.
He and Paul rode around the estate together in a white pickup and black pickup, he said.
He said they looked at sunflowers on the grounds and “just talked”, speaking about the “stress on him with the boat crash”.
During the interview, Mr Murdaugh told law enforcement that he and Maggie had been worried about Paul and were trying to get him to go to doctor for “stresses of everything with the boat wreck”.
Paul was “very resistant” to the idea, he said.
“We tried to watch him really closely but he was resistant,” he said.
Agent Owen confronted him with information taken from his work key card and statements made by his brother Randy which contradicted his timeline.
The keycard reveals that Mr Murdaugh actually entered his office at around 5.30pm that day, the agent said.
Randy had also told investigators that he left the offices at around 6pm and Mr Murdaugh was still there.
Change of clothing one hour before murders
Agent Owen also asked Mr Murdaugh about his change of clothing – from a Snapchat video sent by Paul an hour before the murders to the moment police arrived on the scene of the grisly crime.
One hour before the murders, at 7.56pm, Paul sent a Snapchat video to his friend showing his father on the grounds of the family estate.
In the footage, Mr Murdaugh is dressed in trousers, loafers and a blue button-down shirt.
Less than one hour on from the Snapchat, Paul and Maggie were shot dead at around 8.50pm.
Bodycam footage from the first officer arriving on the scene at around 10.30pm was previously played in court. It shows the disgraced attorney in a different outfit of a white short-sleeved t-shirt and shorts.
When asked by Agent Owen about the change of clothes, Mr Murdaugh stalled – before saying he was “not sure”.
He then said: “I guess I changed when I got back to the house.”
Prosecutors have suggested that Mr Murdaugh changed clothing after killing his wife and son. Multiple law enforcement officials have testified that Mr Murdaugh and his clothing were “clean from head to toe” – despite his claims he had touched the bloody bodies of his wife and son after finding them.
Visit to sick mother
The police interview also revealed Mr Murdaugh claiming he had spent 45 minutes to an hour at his sick mother’s house that night – a timeline that has been refuted by both car data and testimony from his mother’s carer.
Mr Murdaugh told the officers that he had dinner with Maggie and Paul and then he lay down on couch and “dozed off”.
When he woke, he said he went to check on his mother, because she has Alzheimer’s and his father was in hospital. He said he would visit his mother “all times of the day”.
Mr Murdaugh said he did not check with Maggie if she wanted to come with him.
“I don’t remember having plans that Maggie was going to arrive with me but maybe she told me she was that night,” he said.
“I don’t remember that specfically... but she didn’t normally go with me...it’s not like we had plans that she was going to ride with me.”
He then claimed that he stayed at his parents’ home for around 45 minutes to one hour and said that he didn’t stop anywhere to or from the visit.
“No I didn’t go anywhere... I went straight,” he said.
Last week, Muschelle “Shelly” Smith, who worked as a caregiver to Mr Murdaugh’s mother Libby, testified that a “fidgety” Mr Murdaugh showed up at his sick mother’s house sometime between 8.30pm and 9.30pm on the night of the murders.
She said it was unusual for him to visit at that time. She said he stayed only around 20 minutes – but then later told her to tell police he had been there double that time.
“I was here 30 to 40 minutes,” she said he told her.
The conversation left her feeling “nervous” and he later offered “to help her out” with paying for her upcoming wedding and putting in a good word for her with her other job, she said.
Data taken from Mr Murdaugh’s SUV also indicates that Mr Murdaugh did leave his family home and drove to visit his sick mother at around 9.06pm, arriving at 9.22pm.
The records suggest he only stayed at his parents’ home for 21 minutes, leaving again at 9.43pm and arriving at Moselle at around 10pm. He called 911 at 10.06pm.
Paul’s cellphone video
In the 11 August interview, Mr Murdaugh is heard telling the SLED agent that he did not go to the dog kennels after having dinner with Maggie and Paul and before visiting his mother.
This statement contradicts bombshell cellphone footage retrieved from Paul’s phone.
The footage, taken by Paul at the dog kennels just minutes before he and Maggie were shot dead, captures three voices off camera.
Cellphone data shows it was recorded for 58 seconds from 8.44.49pm to 8.45.47pm – less than five minutes before prosecutors say the murders unfolded at 8.50pm.
Multiple witnesses – including two of Paul’s best friends and Mr Murdaugh’s longtime friends – have testified at trial that they are “100 percent sure” that the three voices belong to Paul, Maggie and Mr Murdaugh.
Agent Owen brought up the video in the August interview, telling Mr Murdaugh “you were heard in the background”.
Mr Murdaugh said that he had heard about the video from Paul’s friend Rogan Gibson who asked him if he had been at the kennels.
When asked if it was him in the video, he said: “No sir... not if my times are right.”
Asked who could be, he said he had “no idea” and said he was surprised that Mr Gibson – who was very close with the family – thought it was his voice.
911 call statements
In the police interview, Agent Owen also asked Mr Murdaugh about several comments he had made in the 911 call reporting the murders – compared to what he was telling him two months on.
The footage shows Mr Murdaugh telling the officers that he went to the dog kennels after returning from his mother’s house.
When asked where the dogs were, he said he “didn’t move the dogs” and didn’t “recall a dog being out”.
However, in the 911 call, he is heard appearing to call to someone or something, saying: “Here, here.”
Agent Owen pointed out the call saying it sounded like he was talking to somebody else or calling for one of the dogs.
Mr Murdaugh confirmed that he didn’t see any people at the kennels and was “certain” none of the dogs were loose at the time.
The agent also asked him about another comment he is heard making in the call: “I should have known.”
Mr Murdaugh said he was likely talking about the murders potentially being connected to the fatal boat crash.
“I don’t remember saying that but I guess all the threats... I was convinced this was something to do with the boat wreck and all of that,” he said.
When asked about telling the dispatcher he picked up Paul’s cellphone and “thought about doing something” but put it back, he said he couldn’t remember what he was thinking.
“I don’t know. When I went up to him and the phone came out I don’t remember having any intentions of doing anything with the phone,” he said.
Why Maggie and Paul came to Moselle that night
Discrepancies were also revealed in Mr Murdaugh’s account of why Maggie was even at the Moselle estate that day.
The accused killer claimed that he wasn’t expecting his wife home but that he later learned she had come to the property because she was worried about him.
“Maggie wasn’t supposed to come home. I’ve since found out she was worried about me and worried about my dad and so she came home,” he said.
“That wasn’t 100 percent but it was pretty well [known] that she was going to stay at Edisto.”
When asked if he was surprised, he said that she had let him know earlier in the day but said he only learned her reason “why” after the murders.
During testimony from the Murdaugh’s longtime housekeeper and friend Blanca Simpson, jurors heard that Mr Murdaugh had insisted both Maggie and Paul come to the property at Moselle.
Phone calls and text messages between Ms Simpson and Maggie were presented in court, with Ms Simpson saying that Maggie texted her saying: “Alex wants me to come home.”
Maggie liked being at the family beach house in Edisto and had been preparing to host a big July 4 gathering there, she said.
In a phone conversation, Maggie also mentioned that Mr Murdaugh wanted her to come to Moselle that day and she seemed a bit “disappointed”, she said.
“She sounded like she didn’t want to come home... she sounded like she was a little disappointed,” she said.
Mr Murdaugh had also asked Paul to come home too because he wanted his son to “fix” something on the property, Ms Simpson testified.
Missing guns
On Monday, prosecutors said that the state was on track to finish its case on Wednesday.
Prosecutors claim that Mr Murdaugh shot dead Maggie and Paul at the dog kennels on the family’s sprawling 1,700-acre estate at around 8.50pm on the night of 7 June 2021.
Mr Murdaugh claims he was asleep at the house and woke up and went to visit his mother. When he returned, he said he found his wife and son’s bodies.
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.
Meanwhile, the defence is seeking to paint him as a family man who could not have carried out the brutal murders because he loved his wife and son.
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.
At the time of the murders, Paul was awaiting trial over the death 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. It was postponed following Maggie and Paul’s murders.
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.
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.
Mr Murdaugh, 54, is facing life in prison for the murders of his wife and son. He has pleaded not guilty.
