Disgraced legal heir Alex Murdaugh appeared in court on Wednesday in South Carolina for a hearing on the scion’s wife and son’s savage killings last year, according to police, who now say they have a “mountain of evidence” against him.
More than a year after the deaths of Maggie and Paul Murdaugh were discovered on the family’s expansive hunting estate in Colleton County, Murdaugh, 54, was briefly seen leaving jail for a bond hearing about the two first-degree murder charges.
The formerly well-known attorney was charged with two charges of murder on Thursday for the heinous incident, in which police claim Murdaugh murdered Paul, 22, and Maggie, 52, at their Moselle home with a shotgun and a rifle, respectively.
On Thursday, Murdaugh was formally charged with their homicides. A grand jury indicted the former legal scion on two counts of murder and two counts of possessing a weapon while committing a violent felony.
He is already in jail after being found guilty of separate fraud and embezzlement crimes. It’s unknown when he’ll be arraigned for the killings of his wife Maggie and son Paul on June 7, 2021, on the family’s estate.
It took police about 13 months to file charges against Murdaugh, who is already in jail on separate counts of fraud and embezzlement relating to money he stole from his law firm and a failed attempt to stage his own murder as part of a $10 million life insurance scam for his son. Murdaugh has also been accused of staging his own murder on several occasions.
On Thursday, testimony will be presented before the grand jury.
When he returned to the family’s 1,700-acre hunting estate of Moselle at around 10 p.m. thirteen months ago, Murdaugh said authorities he ‘found’ the bodies of his youngest son and wife by dog kennels.
In the recording of the 911 call he made that evening at 10:07 p.m., he can be heard screaming to the dispatcher, “I need the police and an ambulance immediately.” My wife and child were recently severely shot.
Paul, 22, suffered two gunshot wounds: one to the head and one to the chest. An assault rifle has been used to shoot Maggie several times. According to reports, their gunshot wounds were compatible with “execution-style” murders.
Paul’s body was discovered partially inside one of the kennels, while his mother’s was discovered several feet away, leading authorities to think that she escaped her killer before being shot.
She was believed to have sustained at least two of her gunshot wounds while lying on the ground.
That night, if the dogs howled, it was in vain.
Murdaugh’s family and attorneys vigorously defended the man and his marriage in the immediate wake of the shocking revelations.
Dick Harpootlian, an attorney, claimed that Murdaugh had a “ironclad alibi” and that his marriage to Maggie was “full of love.”
However, during the course of the intervening months, a completely different picture that casts doubt on both assertions has emerged, and a grand jury is likely to hear evidence and witness testimony on Thursday.
According to information obtained by DailyMail.com, Murdaugh’s original denials that he was anywhere near the property between 9 and 9:30 p.m., the time the coroner estimated the time of death, have been dramatically revised.
Murdaugh informed detectives that, at the time of the murders, he was visiting his dying father and mother at their house in Varnville, which was about 11 miles away.
His brothers John Marvin and Randy Murdaugh revealed to Good Morning America two weeks later that he had in fact dropped his father off at a hospital in Savannah before travelling to see his dementia-stricken mother.
Currently, Murdaugh claims to have left the property at 9 p.m. to make the 20-minute journey to his mother’s house and to have returned to Moselle as previously reported around or just after 10 p.m., according to an account provided by Murdaugh’s attorney Jim Griffin to The State newspaper.
He is clearly shown to have been there during the killings according to this testimony.
It has been suggested that Murdaugh’s abrupt change of heart was brought on by audio and video evidence retrieved from Paul’s cellphone, which was discovered alongside his corpse but was just recently unlocked by police authorities.
According to independent local news outlet FITSNews, not only do these audio and visual records show Murdaugh speaking with Maggie, but also the “high velocity impact spatter” of blood found on his clothing that evening places him at the scene of the murders at the time at least one of the victims was killed.
According to information obtained by DailyMail.com, Murdaugh’s original denials that he was anywhere near the property between 9 and 9:30 p.m., the time the coroner estimated the time of death, have been dramatically revised.
Murdaugh informed detectives that, at the time of the murders, he was visiting his dying father and mother at their house in Varnville, which was about 11 miles away.
His brothers John Marvin and Randy Murdaugh revealed to Good Morning America two weeks later that he had in fact dropped his father off at a hospital in Savannah before travelling to see his dementia-stricken mother.
Currently, Murdaugh claims to have left the property at 9 p.m. to make the 20-minute journey to his mother’s house and to have returned to Moselle as previously reported around or just after 10 p.m., according to an account provided by Murdaugh’s attorney Jim Griffin to The State newspaper.
He is clearly shown to have been there during the killings according to this testimony.
It has been suggested that Murdaugh’s abrupt change of heart was brought on by audio and video evidence retrieved from Paul’s cellphone, which was discovered alongside his corpse but was just recently unlocked by police authorities.
According to independent local news outlet FITSNews, not only do these audio and visual records show Murdaugh speaking with Maggie, but also the “high velocity impact spatter” of blood found on his clothing that evening places him at the scene of the murders at the time at least one of the victims was killed.
The South Carolina Law Enforcement Department (SLED) refused to either confirm or reject these charges when DailyMail.com brought them up last week.
The marriage Harpootlian depicted as “full of love” was, in contrast, anything but, according to numerous sources.
According to a source who is familiar with the home, Maggie and Murdaugh’s marriage is in trouble.
Locally and online, there has been a lot of talk about Murdaugh allegedly having an affair with another lawyer.
Additionally, the insider who spoke with DailyMail.com claimed that the formerly in love couple had “no love lost.”
In fact, the informant claimed that Maggie and Murdaugh had heated financial arguments in the months prior to her tragic death.
Maggie, a pillar of the South Carolina charitable community, had suffered social embarrassment when a check she had signed at a luncheon for a good cause bounced.
She repeatedly demanded answers to her concerns concerning the family’s finances, and this was just one of many instances where she did so.
According to FITSNews, Maggie only travelled to Moselle on the night of her death “reluctantly” and at Murdaugh’s request. She was living apart from Murdaugh at the family home on Edisto Beach.
In the weeks prior to her death, Maggie reportedly visited a divorce attorney, which led People magazine to believe that she was threatening to hire a forensic accountant.
As part of a wrongful death lawsuit being launched against him and his older son, Richard “Buster” Murdaugh, Jr., by the family of Mallory Beach, the teenager died in a terrible boat disaster in 2019, Murdaugh was under intense pressure to turn over his financial documents.
Paul was intoxicated when the boat, which was carrying six underage drinkers, crashed into some pilings on Archers Creek.