Prosecutors used Maggie Murdaugh’s cell phone data and the testimony of an expert witness in an attempt to reconstruct her final movements before she was killed.
Her husband, Alex Murdaugh, is accused of murdering her and their son Paul. He insists he is innocent.
The jury in at the Colleton County Courthouse in Walterboro, South Carolina on Tuesday afternoon heard testimony from expert witness Brett Dove about what could be gleaned about the timeline of Ms Murdaugh’s from GPS data, phone tower data, and call and text logs from device on the day of the murder.
According to Mr Dove, Ms Murdaugh’s phone showed she made a call to a contact named “Barbara” that evening at 7.50pm that lasted for two minutes and 46 seconds. It was the last phone call she made. Alex Murdaugh called her phone at 9.04pm and then twice at 9.06pm, but those calls were not answered.
Mr Murdaugh attempted to reach Ms Murdaugh by phone twice more, at 9.45pm and at 10.03pm, before calling 911 at 10.06pm.
There was also ample information available from Ms Murdaugh’s text activity.
At 8.31pm, Ms Murdaugh recieved a text message in a group chat with other members of her family from John Marvin announcing that he was planning to visit his father the next day and asking if anyone else wanted to join him.
Ms Murdaugh’s phone read the message at 8.31pm when it came in, and it read another message at 8.49pm in the group chat and then “locked.” Subsequent text messages were not read and subsequent calls, including those five calls from Mr Murdaugh, were not answered.
At 8.54pm, the phone’s orientation was changed to and then away from landscape mode. Then, as the orientation was changed for the second time, its camera activated for one second. The activiation of the camera may have suggested that someone had picked up the phone, but Mr Dove said that person likely was not Ms Murdaugh herself.
“It appears the phone is being moved and the camera is activating in the background to see if it would recognise somebody’s face that would unlock it,” Mr Dove testified.
Ms Murdaugh’s phone was not unlocked again until the following afternoon when it was discovered following the killing. The prosecution believes that Ms Murdaugh was killed between 8.49pm and 9.04pm.
Mr Dove was due to retake the witness stand when next the court convenes on Wednesday morning.
