The jurors who will decide Alex Murdaugh’s fate toured the South Carolina hunting lodge Wednesday where his wife and son were found murdered — getting an up-close look for the first time of where the grisly crime occurred.
Alex Murdaugh has been charged in the killing of his son Paul, 22, and wife Maggie Murdaugh, 52, who were found dead on June 7, 2021, shot with two different weapons, neither of which has been recovered.
Jurors got to see inside the small feed room where Paul was found dead on Wednesday. Paul had been shot at such a close range the room was covered in his blood and body matter in the aftermath of the crime.
Alex’s brother John Marvin Murdaugh tearfully recounted how he had cleaned up the crime scene on the stand Monday, saying: “I saw blood, I saw brains, I saw pieces of skull, I saw tissue.
“And when I say brains it could just be tissue. I don’t know what I saw, it was just terrible.”
However, he added he felt he owed it to his nephew to sanitize the area.
The tour of the Islandton property was approved by Colleton County Court Judge Clifton Newman, who joined the jurors on the walk through.
The tour, already eerie enough, was likely silent — jurors are not allowed to talk to one another about the case until deliberation, and lawyers can’t note details they think are important to jury.
Murdaugh’s defense attorney Dick Harpootlian requested for the tour in hopes it would give the jury context for his clients alibi: That he was in the main house when his loved ones were brutally murdered and it was far enough away he couldn’t hear the shooting.
The disgraced lawyer, who also stands accused of dozens of financial crimes, admitted he had previously lied and was in fact at the dog kennels by the murder scene right before the killing, but said he drove a golf cart back to the main property right before the slayings. Murdaugh then went to visit his ailing mother, and came back to discover Paul and Maggie dead, he said.
Throughout the six week trial, prosecution has claimed Murdaugh killed his family members to distract from his financial crimes, painting him as a wealthy, deceitful and drug-addicted man who would do anything for money.
Murdaugh, who has returned each night to jail while the trial happened, told jurors that he is a deeply flawed man, but has insisted he would never kill his wife and son.
As well as John Marvin, Alex’s surviving son Buster came to his defense, testifying on the stand how his father phoned him to tell him his mother and brother had been shot, and was “destroyed” when he raced over to their house.
After returning from the tour, jurors heard prosecution’s closing arguments.
“This man is trying to sell you on the idea that he was at the kennels, then jetted back, quickly dozed off in the shortest nap in the history of the South,” prosecutor Creighton Waters said in court Wednesday following the tour.
Waters said Murdaugh’s reputation was about to be ruined as his financial schemes crumbled, and “his ego couldn’t stand that … And he became a family annihilator.”