Alex Murdaugh looked up restaurant, viewed text with bikini pic after finding wife, son murdered: witness

Alex Murdaugh looked up the name of a restaurant and viewed a text about a woman in a bikini after calling 911 to alert police that his wife and son were murdered, according to a witness who testified Friday.

SLED Special Agent Peter Rudofski, who specializes in analyzing phone data, said Alex Murdaugh’s phone records indicated that after the disgraced lawyer called 911 at 10:11 to alert authorities that Maggie Murdaugh and Paul Murdaugh had been shot dead on his hunting property on the evening of June 7, 2021, he viewed seemingly random content on his phone.

The former South Carolina attorney opened a group text message about “a picture of a woman in a bikini” from a friend and Googled a restaurant called Whaley’s in Edisto Beach around 10:40 p.m. after placing the 911 call, according to a timeline of his phone data from June 7.

“He would seem to be in a state of shock,” defense attorney Phillip Barber said of Murdaugh. “None of that makes any sense, does it? You’re not going to Google the name of a restaurant after you find your son murdered.”

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Alex Murdaugh opened a group text message about “a picture of a woman in a bikini” from a friend and Googled a restaurant called Whaley’s in Edisto Beach around 10:40 p.m. after placing the 911 call. (Grace Beahm Alford/The Post And Courier via AP, Pool)

Rudofski said he is “not Alex Murdaugh” and could not speculate when he was thinking as he Googled Whaley’s and opened a group text about a woman in a bikini.

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“I wouldn’t be on my phone,” the SLED agent responded.

Directly after placing the 911, Alex also called one of his son’s best friends, Rogan Gibson, who had been in touch with Paul throughout the evening on June 7 and continued to call him after he was shot to death. Alex placed the call to Gibson after calling John Marvin Murdaugh and Randy Murdaugh, his brothers.

“As an investigator, do you think it’d be terribly unreasonable that after calling other family members, someone would call the person who is the best friend of the dead son…to ask that person what happened? What’s going on?” Barber asked Rudofski.

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The SLED agent replied: “As an investigator, I do think that would be very odd, given the scene and the whole situation, that you’re on the phone constantly. … I am standing over my son and wife, and just witnessing that for the first time, I would think that would be — to have someone on their phone constantly like that right after given the scene and the situation … I would think that is very odd.”

SLED Special Agent Peter Rudofski said Alex Murdaugh’s phone records indicated that after Alex called 911 at 10:11 to alert authorities that Maggie Murdaugh and Paul Murdaugh had been shot dead on his hunting property on the evening of June 7, 2021, he viewed seemingly random content on his phone. (Grace Beahm Alford/The Post And Courier via AP, Pool)

“I’d be in a state of shock, personally,” he added.

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Alex also called a videographer he “hadn’t spoken to in years” on the night of the murders, Barber noted in an effort to drive home the point that the former lawyer may have been in shock after the murders.

Alex is charged in Maggie and Paul’s murders. Prosecutors allege that he killed his loved ones in an effort to draw attention away from his 99 alleged financial crimes totaling about $9 million, which were beginning to come to light in the summer of 2021.

The former lawyer maintains that he was napping at the time of the murders and then drove to see his mother, who has dementia, before he returned home and found his wife and son’s bodies.