South Carolina prosecutors in the double murder trial of Alex Murdaugh rested their case Friday after having called more than 60 witnesses over four weeks — a hodgepodge of testimony and evidence that sought to leave no doubt in jurors’ minds that he fatally shot his wife and son in 2021.
Yet, the prosecution offered no hard proof — such as a confession, eyewitnesses, video or fingerprints — that Murdaugh, a once-powerful lawyer and part-time prosecutor in South Carolina’s Lowcountry, had pulled the trigger.
Although the Murdaugh family owned guns, several of which were seized from their Colleton County hunting property in the investigation, the prosecution has said investigators didn’t find the actual murder weapons: a shotgun and an AR-style rifle.
Creighton Waters, the chief prosecutor for the state attorney general’s office, had relied heavily on circumstantial evidence to posit a motive for why Murdaugh, 54, would have wanted his wife, Margaret, 52, and their son Paul, 22, dead, and offered a timeline based on cellphone and car GPS data to show he had the opportunity.
On the day of the slayings, June 7, 2021, Murdaugh’s law firm questioned him about $792,000 in missing client settlement funds, according to court testimony. Prosecutors say Murdaugh killed Margaret and Paul that evening near the hunting lodge’s outdoor dog kennels to distract from the widening probe into long-running financial misdeeds, which included allegations of stealing from his clients. The chief financial officer of his law firm, which Murdaugh’s great-grandfather founded more than 100 years ago, testified that she halted her investigation after the murders.
Last week, state Circuit Judge Clifton Newman gave the prosecution a pivotal win when he said the jury could hear witness testimony about Murdaugh’s “dire financial situation,” ruling that while the state doesn’t need to prove a motive for the murders, “the state must prove malice, and evidence of motive may be used to prove it.”
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