WALTERBORO, S.C. — A detective who was the first to interview Alex Murdaugh the night his wife and son were killed attempted to poke holes in his story during Friday’s testimony at the Colleton County Courthouse in South Carolina.
Murdaugh told investigators with the State Law Enforcement Division what happened the night of his wife and son were murdered on June 7, 2021, described the family’s relationships with each other, and offered his theory on what may have happened when Maggie and Paul Murdaugh were shot and killed at the family’s rural Colleton County estate.
Jurors on Friday listened to audio of a recorded interview with Murdaugh conducted the night of the murders, the second full day of testimony in the long-anticipated murder trial in Walterboro.
Murdaugh described coming home from his mother’s house and discovering the bodies while seated in an investigator’s car at the Moselle property in Islandton. He can be heard crying at times on the tape.
“I pulled up and I could see them, I knew it was something bad,” Murdaugh said.
Playing the recording was the first time prosecutors gave a detailed accounting of the night from Murdaugh’s perspective. He told investigators he attempted to turn over the body of his son, Paul, knocking Paul’s cellphone out of his pocket in the process.
“His cellphone popped out, and I tried to do something with it, then I put it down immediately,” Murdaugh told investigators.
He told investigators he also touched his wife Maggie’s body, attempting to get a pulse. After calling 911, he told investigators he called both of his brothers and attempted to call a neighbor who did not answer. He said he had called and texted Maggie when he left his mother’s house, but did not get a response.
Laura Rutland, a detective with the Colleton County Sheriff’s Office, testified she found Murdaugh’s story unusual at the time. Murdaugh’s mother suffers from late-stage Alzheimer’s, a disease she characterized as usually worse in the evenings. Murdaugh said he didn’t return from his mother’s house until after 9 p.m.
Defense attorney Jim Griffin noted that the day in question Murdaugh’s father had been admitted to the hospital. His father, a former state prosecutor, died a few days later.
“You don’t criticize a son for visiting his mother with late-stage Alzheimer’s on the same night his father went into the hospital,” Griffin said.
Prosecutor John Meadors also questioned Rutland about the state of Murdaugh’s clothes the night of the murder. Although he said he had tried to check for signs of life on the two bodies, Rutland described Murdaugh’s hands, shirt, shorts and shoes as “clean,” without visible blood from his contact with what other witnesses have described as a very bloody scene.
Griffin noted that also would not have been the case if Murdaugh had killed his wife and son at close range, as the prosecution contends.
Rutland also testified that when she first spoke to Murdaugh at the scene, he was speaking to another man whom he introduced as Dan Henderson, another lawyer at Murdaugh’s former law firm — Peters, Murdaugh, Parker, Eltzroth & Detrick — whom she understood to be his “personal attorney.”
Meadors, who questioned the witness Friday morning, is an experienced prosecutor in high-profile cases hired by the South Carolina attorney general’s office shortly before the start of the Murdaugh trial.
Murdaugh described his relationship with Maggie as “a wonderful marriage, wonderful relationship,” and said the relationship between Paul and Maggie was “as good as it can be.”
“Paul was a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful kid,” Murdaugh said on the tape.
In the courtroom, Murdaugh could be seen bowing his head and bobbing it slightly back and forth as some of the more emotional parts of the tape were played. His attorney Dick Harpootlian at one point turned and patted him on the shoulder.
Murdaugh said he was unaware of any trespassers who may have been on the Moselle property recently, but that the “negative publicity” around a boat wreck Paul was involved with in which a young woman was killed lead to some “pretty vile stuff” being directed at Paul, who Murdaugh said had been “punched and hit and just attacked a lot, but nothing like this.”
Asked if Paul had been directly threatened, Murdaugh says, “Oh yes, he gets them all the time, ‘I’ll kick your ass,’ I’ve never been privy firsthand.”
In his conversation with the State Law Enforcement Division, Murdaugh also referenced C.B. Rowe, the groundskeeper for the Moselle property, who he said “wasn’t doing a good job” and had killed plants on the property. Rowe was off work June 7, the day the murders took place.
