By JEFFREY COLLINS (Associated Press)
Alex Murdaugh’s theft of tens of millions of {dollars} was about to be revealed so he killed his spouse and son to purchase time to determine a approach out, a prosecutor stated Wednesday throughout closing arguments within the disgraced South Carolina legal professional’s homicide trial.
Murdaugh’s concern that his decade-long theft can be uncovered and his need to take care of his lofty standing in the neighborhood led him to verify his spouse and youthful son had been on the household’s Colleton County dwelling on June 7, 2021, in order that he may kill them as a part of a intelligent plan aided by his data of how legal instances are constructed, prosecutor Creighton Waters instructed jurors.
“The pressures on this man were unbearable. And they were all reaching a crescendo the day his wife and son were murdered by him,” Waters stated. The protection would get to sum up its case later Wednesday.
Murdaugh, 54, faces 30 years to life in jail if he’s convicted of both homicide rely. Investigators stated his 22-year-old son, Paul, was shot twice with a shotgun and his 52-year-old spouse, Maggie, was shot 4 or 5 instances with a rifle exterior of the kennels on their property.
Jurors started the day with a go to to the crime scene, the place a pool reporter stated no less than considered one of them fastidiously inspected the door body of a storage closet the place Paul Murdaugh was standing when he was killed.
The key piece of proof connecting Alex Murdaugh to the killings is a video Paul Murdaugh shot from the kennels about 5 minutes earlier than he final used his cellphone. It took greater than a yr for federal brokers to hack into the younger man’s locked iPhone and discover it.
Although the weapons used to kill the victims haven’t been discovered, an skilled testified that the markings on the bullet casings discovered close to Maggie Murdaugh’s physique matched these discovered on casings at a capturing vary on the household’s property.
But there was no blood spatter or DNA linking the killings to Alex Murdaugh or anybody else, and prosecutors by no means laid out how they suppose Murdaugh may have killed his household, cleaned himself up, disposed of the garments and weapons, and composed himself within the 15-minute window earlier than GPS information exhibits he left the property to go to his ailing mom.
The prosecution’s star crime scene skilled stated there isn’t sufficient proof to undoubtedly say whether or not there have been one or two shooters on the kennels.
Still, Waters stated there’s sufficient proof to hyperlink the killings to the monetary crimes and to Alex Murdaugh being the one particular person with the means and alternative to kill his spouse and son.
“As all of these pressures were mounting, the defendant killed Maggie and Paul,’ Waters said, pulling out his cellphone and waving it. ”The forensic timeline places him there. The use of the household weapons collaborates it. And his lies and his responsible actions afterward verify that.”
Waters stated Alex Murdaugh has been mendacity for years to cowl up his opioid habit and theft of cash from his regulation agency and shoppers, so it will be simple to lie about being on the kennels and killing his household, and to lie whereas testifying in his personal protection final week.
“Always having to stay one step ahead of the game. Always have to literally beg, borrow and steal for over a decade to have the truth from being exposed,” Waters stated.
The protection has stated state brokers carried out a poor investigation that targeted too shortly on Alex Murdaugh and missed proof reminiscent of fingerprints and shoe prints that would have led to the actual killers.
They requested for jurors to be allowed to go to the property with a purpose to assist them perceive how small the storage room is the place Paul Murdaugh was killed and the space between the 2 our bodies.
Prosecutors opposed the go to, saying the scene appears to be like totally different than it did in June 2021, as timber and vegetation have grown and nobody has lived on the property for the reason that killings.
Judge Clifton Newman allowed the go to however cautioned jurors in regards to the variations in how the property appears to be like now. They had been additionally cautioned to look at for snakes.
Once closing arguments are completed, the jurors will get their directions and start deliberating what they realized throughout a trial that has included greater than 75 witnesses and lasted greater than six weeks. They will be capable to assessment about 800 paperwork, images, movies of police interviews of Alex Murdaugh and different reveals whereas deciding on a verdict.
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Find extra AP protection of the case: https://apnews.com/hub/alex-murdaugh
Source: www.bostonherald.com”