The crime scene evidence that convicted Alex Murdaugh

On March 2, 2023, the six-week murder trial of South Carolina attorney Alex Murdaugh came to a surprisingly swift conclusion. See some of the evidence that led the jury to find him guilty after just under three hours of deliberation. 

Murder at the kennels

On June 7, 2021, Maggie and Paul Murdaugh were found dead at these dog kennels on the Murdaugh family property off of Moselle Road in Colleton County, South Carolina. The property was known simply as “Moselle.”

Alex Murdaugh on trial

Alex Murdaugh, the patriarch of the family, became a suspect in the crime early in the investigation. In July 2022, he was indicted on two counts of murder for the deaths of his wife and son. His trial began in January 2023 and lasted six weeks.

Conversations with a killer

In the first weeks of the trial, the jury was shown Alex Murdaugh’s interviews with police. In this one from late on the night of the murders, Murdaugh tells investigators about finding the bodies of his wife and child at the kennels.

“When I came back here, I mean, I pulled up and I could see them, and, you know, I knew something was bad,” he said. “… I called 911 pretty much right away.”

A bloody scene

When police responded to Murdaugh’s 911 call that night, they found a gruesome scene. Blood and other biological matter were strewn across the ground and walls.

During the trial, attorneys showed this photo and other crime scene images to the jury to explain the nature of the crime and demonstrate the angles of the weapons when the shots were fired. 

The red footprints

When police responded to Murdaugh’s 911 call that night, they found a gruesome scene. Blood and other biological matter were strewn across the ground and walls.

During the trial, attorneys showed this photo and other crime scene images to the jury to explain the nature of the crime and demonstrate the angles of the weapons when the shots were fired. 

Shots fired

These shells and others like them were found at the scene. They were photographed, secured, and labeled for future examination. With the help of shells like these, investigators were able to determine exactly what types of guns caused Paul and Maggie’s wounds.

A family weapon

Investigators argued that the guns used in the fatal shootings of Paul and Maggie were guns belonging to the Murdaugh family, similar to the one pictured here. The actual murder weapons were never found.

“Family weapons were used to commit this crime,” said Prosecutor Creighton Waters in his closing argument.

A store of ammunition

The Murdaughs also kept stocks of ammunition at home for their various hunting weapons. This box, found on a bookcase in the Murdaugh home, contains 300 Blackout cartridges – the type of ammunition used to kill Maggie

The gun room

The Murdaughs had many firearms on the property, as they were avid hunters. Inside the main house at Moselle the family had a room that investigators called the “gun room,” a storage space for the Murdaugh family’s large gun collection. This photo of the gun room was shown at trial

Maggie Murdaugh’s autopsy

Dr. Ellen Riemer, who conducted the autopsies, testified at trial that Maggie Murdaugh was shot four or five times with a 300 Blackout rifle. Here, she shows the jury the location of Maggie’s wounds on an autopsy diagram.

Shotgun wounds

Paul Murdaugh sustained injuries from a different type of gun — a shotgun. Dr. Reimer showed the jury a diagram that illustrated Paul’s two wounds. He was shot first in the chest, then a second shot entered through his shoulder and exited through his head. It was the second shot that would prove fatal.

In part because the victims were shot with different guns, at trial the defense proposed a theory that there were two different shooters that night.

Gunshot geometry

The defense also used the angles of the bullet holes found at the crime scene to support the idea that there were two shooters. SLED Agent Melinda Worley points out the holes on a diagram in this image from her testimony.

When the prosecution questioned Agent Worley, she said the two-shooter theory was not the only possible explanation for the position of the bullet holes. Another possible interpretation was that there was one shooter who was moving.

One possible scenario

A forensic engineer who testified for the defense created this crime scene reconstruction image to show the jury a possible two-shooter scenario. He said that based on the trajectory of the bullets, the shooters must have been short – between 5’2″ and 5’4″. Because Alex Murdaugh is 6’4″, the defense argued he was too tall to have committed this crime.

Prosecution experts countered that it was not possible to conclusively determine the height of the shooter, and this reconstruction was just one of many possible scenarios.

Alex Murdaugh’s phone

Cell phone evidence would be just as important as the crime scene in solving the Murdaugh case. Investigators took Alex Murdaugh’s phone, pictured here, and pored through his texts, phone calls, and other data looking for clues.

What they found was as important as what they didn’t find — namely, multiple phone calls that Alex had made to Maggie. Records of those showed up on Maggie’s phone, but the corresponding records were missing from Alex’s.

Missing evidence

When investigators first arrived at the scene, Maggie Murdaugh’s phone was missing. But with the help of the “Find My iPhone” feature, it was located the next day along a road not far from the Moselle property.

Experts who examined GPS data from the phones and Alex’s vehicle said that on the night of the murders, Alex Murdaugh drove past the spot where Maggie’s phone would later be found. The prosecution argued that Alex Murdaugh threw Maggie’s phone out the window of his car in an attempt to dispose of evidence. 

The kennel video

Perhaps the most significant piece of evidence came from another phone — Paul Murdaugh’s.

Alex Murdaugh claimed for months that he had not been at the kennels on the night of the murders. But in a video taken on Paul’s phone only minutes before the murders likely took place, Alex Murdaugh’s voice can be heard, placing him at the kennel that night. This is a screenshot of that video, showing Paul’s hand and a friend’s dog in the kennel.

Bubba Murdaugh

In Paul Murdaugh’s kennel video, Alex Murdaugh’s voice can be heard in the background calling to Bubba, one of the Murdaugh family’s dogs, who had a chicken in his mouth. 

In an interview with CBS News, Prosecutor Creighton Waters gave Bubba some credit for helping with the case. “If Bubba didn’t have that chicken maybe we would not have heard Alex’s voice on there,” he said. “But we did, and that I think really helped the jury understand.” 

“I did lie to them”

When he took the stand in his own defense, Alex Murdaugh admitted that it was his voice on the video, and that he had lied to investigators about not being at the scene of the crime that night. He claimed that his decades-long opioid addiction had made him paranoid, and he feared he would be suspected if he told the truth.

The prosecution pointed out that Murdaugh’s lie about the kennels was another in a long string of lies dating back years. 

Alex Murdaugh’s crimes

Alex Murdaugh admitted on the stand that over the years he had embezzled money from his law firm, misled his clients, and lied to his family about his addiction.

“Not a single person close to him hadn’t been lied to by this man,” Prosecutor Creighton Waters said in his closing argument. “.He was lying to you … just like he’s lied to everyone close to him.”

A broken family

Throughout the six-week trial, the prosecution repeatedly accused Alex Murdaugh of being a “family annihilator” who brutally murdered his wife Maggie and son Paul, 22. On March 2, 2023, the jury cbsn of all charges. He was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences.