Maggie Murdaugh’s sister has revealed how Alex Murdaugh reassured her that his wife and son did not suffer when they were brutally murdered.
Taking the stand in Mr Murdaugh’s double murder trial on Tuesday, his sister-in-law Marian Proctor described comments the disgraced legal scion made following the brutal shootings of Paul and Maggie on 7 June 2021. The trial is now in its fourth week at the Colleton County Courthouse in Walterboro, South Carolina.
Questioned by the prosecution, Ms Proctor recounted the moment she found out her sister and nephew had been killed. Ms Proctor became emotional as she testified that she initially could not wrap her hand around the tragedy, and thought there had to be a mistake.
Ms Proctor said that in the aftermath of the killings, she had a conversation with Mr Murdaugh that struck her as odd. She recalled asking him whether he believed Maggie and Paul had suffered painful deaths, with Mr Murdaugh reportedly reassuring her that was not the case.
“Now I don’t know that that’s true,” Ms Proctor told prosecutors through tears.
Later on, Ms Proctor said she asked Alex: “Do you have any idea who’s done this? We’ve got to find out who could do this.”
She said he replied “that he did not know who it was but that whoever did it had thought about it for a long time”.
Ms Proctor said Mr Murdaugh seemed more eager to clear Paul’s name than he was about finding the killer. Ms Proctor described Paul as a “sweet boy” who had been misrepresented by the media because of his role in a boat crash that left one of his friends dead.
At the time of Paul’s death, he was awaiting trial over the death of 19-year-old Mallory Beach who died in a 2019 boat crash where Paul was allegedly drunk driving behind the wheel. He was charged with boating under the influence and faced up to 25 years in prison but was killed before the trial.
“[Mr Murdaugh] said that his number one goal was clearing Paul’s name,” Ms Proctor said. “And I thought that was so strange because my number one goal was finding out who killed my sister and Paul ... I don’t know how he could have thought about anything else.”
“We never talked about it. We never talked about finding the person, who could have done it. It was just odd. We were sort of living in fear because we thought this horrible person was out there,” Ms Proctor said.
“We were mostly afraid for Alex and Buster but we didn’t know the motive behind the killings. We thought it probably had something to do with the boat case. And we thought that up until September. And then things started to change a little bit.”
Ms Proctor said that she was scared about the safety of Mr Murdaugh and his surviving son Buster. Mr Murdaugh, however, did not seem to be worried, she said.
Although Ms Proctor said she initially found it odd that Maggie had not visited Mr Murdaugh’s mother along with him, she said during cross-examination by the defence that Ms Proctor noted that it made sense Maggie did not go to Mr Murdaugh’s parents’ house if his father had already been readmitted to a hospital.
Ms Proctor said that Mr Murdaugh was grieving “terribly” following the murders. She later told the court that she believed clearing Paul’s name could have been Mr Murdaugh’s way of honouring his son.
Ms Proctor also testified that the Murdaughs did not have any financial burdens and Maggie was “happy” with their lifestyle, although she was not involved in the family finances.
The prosecution also asked Ms Proctor about Mr Murdaugh’s alleged conspiracy to pay a hitman to shoot him dead so that Buster would inherit a $10m life insurance windfall. Mr Murdaugh initially claimed he was ambushed in a drive-by shooting while changing a tyre on his vehicle, but his story quickly unravelled and he confessed to orchestrating the plot.
With the jury out of the room, Ms Proctor testified she and her husband got a call in September 2021 from a friend who said they were sorry to hear about Alex.
They didn’t know what they were talking about and were told that Mr Murdaugh had been shot.
“I thought whoever had killed Maggie and Paul had now shot Alex. I was horrified that Buster was next,” Ms Proctor said.
In the four weeks of trial so far, the prosecution has argued in court that Mr Murdaugh killed his wife and son to distract from his mounting financial and legal scandals.
Mr Murdaugh has denied the allegations and pleaded not guilty last June.
The double murder trial is far from Mr Murdaugh’s only legal problem. Besides the case, Mr Murdaugh is facing at least 100 other criminal charges over a string of financial fraud allegations.
