Recapping the Alex Murdaugh murder trial as it goes to jury

After 28 days and more than 70 witnesses in his double homicide trial in Walterboro, SC, the fate of Alex Murdaugh went to a jury late Thursday afternoon.

Jurors must reach a verdict despite the prosecution’s failure to produce even one smoking gun in a case where there were two weapons.

They can deliberate up until 10 p.m. tonight.

Murdaugh’s son Paul — who he repeatedly called “Paul Paul” while on the stand — was shot in the head with a shotgun on June 7, 2021.

Defense lawyer Dick Harpootlian, in his opening arguments, said that Murdaugh found his 22-year-old son “laying in his own blood with his brain lying at his feet.”

Murdaugh’s wife Maggie, 52, was shot five times with a high-powered rifle.

“She was running to her baby, heard that shot, and was running to her baby when she got mowed down,” said prosecutor Creighton Waters during the trial.

Maggie — referred to as “Mags” by her husband during his trial — finally received a bullet wound, execution-style, to the back of her head while lying face down on the ground at the family’s hunting lodge in Islandton, SC.

The weapons have not been recovered.

Murdaugh’s defense lawyer Jim Griffin told jurors in his closing remarks Thursday that investigators “failed miserably,” accusing them of “fabricating evidence” against the defendant.  

“We believe SLED [South Carolina Law Enforcement Division] failed miserably investigating this case and had they done a competent job, Alex would have been excluded from that circle a year ago, two years ago,” he said.

Griffin contended that SLED immediately focused on Murdaugh, now 54, without considering other suspects. 

In a fiery rebuttal by prosecutor John Meadors that closed out the trial, Meadors slammed Murdaugh’s defense team for their accusations that SLED had blown it — pointing out that Murdaugh himself obstructed the case by lying repeatedly about his involvement and whereabouts on the night of the murders.

Murdaugh originally said that he had not been at the dog kennels where his wife and son were brutally slain.

But during the trial, prosecutors revealed they had a Snapchat video, taken by Paul at the family’s kennels minutes before he and his mother were killed, in which Murdaugh’s voice was clearly heard.

The defendant later admitted he had lied about not being at the kennels.

“I find it offensive that a family with a father, a grandfather, a great grandfather [in the legal system]… that the defense, the defendant who is also a part-time solicitor is saying that the law enforcement didn’t do their job, when he is withholding and obstructing justice by not saying, ‘I was down at the kennels, I was down at the kennels, I was down at the kennels,’” Meadors said.

Legal experts and locals are divided over the case and what they think the jury will do.

“SLED has a very circumstantial case and it’s resting on one big lie — that Alex told them he hadn’t been near the kennels when he was,” Columbia, SC, lawyer Joseph M. McCulloch Jr., a longtime friend of Murdaugh’s, told The Post.

“His explanation was that he already knew he was probably a suspect and felt that would make him more guilty.”

One Hampton resident whose family has known the Murdaughs for generations said he thinks the jury will have a tough time reaching a verdict.

“They’re going to have to deal with these things being solved on TV in an hour and realizing this isn’t Hollywood,” he said.

“I think the jury will be overwhelmed and confused. Hell a lot of us around here are, and we know the family and we’ve followed this since day one.”

One longtime observer of the family, who has been watching the trial, echoed some of Meadors’ closing remarks when she told the Post: “Bubba solved the case. Labs are very loyal. They love their owners and Maggie was Bubba’s master.”

Bubba was one of the family’s dogs, said to be Maggie’s favorite and often with her.

Alex Murdaugh could be heard on the Snapchat video at the kennels, yelling at Bubba for catching a chicken.

“Does Bubba have a sixth sense?” Meadors asked, suggesting that the dog somehow caused Murdaugh to speak on the video — revealing him to be a liar about his whereabouts.

“Thank god for Bubba.”

Meadors added of Murdaugh: “I think he loved Maggie. I think he loved Paul. But you know who he loved more than that? … He loved Alex.”

Noticeably missing from the dozens of trial witnesses was Curtis “Cousin Eddie” Smith — perhaps the most colorful character in the Murdaugh saga.

Though he was on the list of potential witnesses, he was never called to the stand.

Smith, 63 and a former logger living on disability, entered the picture on Labor Day 2021 when he was arrested for supposedly trying to shoot Murdaugh on a rural road in a convoluted insurance fraud/suicide-for-hire scam.

Murdaugh’s attorney later claimed his client had a 20-year opioid addiction and that Smith, Murdaugh’s cousin, was his drug dealer.

Waters also said in court last August that money “misappropriated” by Murdaugh went through Smith, who’s in jail after being indicted with Murdaugh in late June on sweeping drug and conspiracy charges.

From Smith, the AG said, the money “continued downstream” to two members of the Walterboro Cowboys gang.

In September, a Cowboy gang member told The Post that Murdaugh “is running half the drugs in this county.”

“Cousin Eddie has receded into folklore while he remains in jail,” McCulloch said. “I think both sides decided he was a potato too hot to toss with this jury.”

“Bringing in Cousin Eddie was too much of a risk,” said Columbia, SC, attorney Eric Bland, who represented the sons of the Murdaughs’ longtime housekeeper, Gloria Satterfield, who died under mysterious circumstances at the family’s home home in 2018

“Look at all the charges he has pending against him,” Bland said of Smith. “He got $2.2 million worth of checks from Alex and then there was that roadside shooting. He would have been subjected to withering questions. But also, Alex is a 90-10 guy — a loving dad friend, lawyer, hunter everyone loved him. But ten percent of the time there was this dark side nobody knows about except Eddie. The defense would not want Eddie up there with all the preppy and genteel friends of Alex and Paul.”

The double murder trial of Murdaugh — the scion of one of South Carolina’s once most powerful legal dynasty — began Jan. 23 at the Colleton County Courthouse in Walterboro, SC.

For almost 90 years, the once-untouchable Murdaugh family ran the prosecutor’s offices in the five counties that make up the South Carolina Low Country while also running a powerhouse litigation firm, Peters, Murdaugh, Parker, Eltzroth & Detrick (PMPED) with tentacles in the highest echelons of the red state — despite being Democrats.

The family survived and thrived for years despite a generational streak of alcohol abuse and violence and a reputation for occasional corruption.

Reeling from the embarrassing revelations that Murdaugh allegedly stole an estimated $4 to $9 million from clients, the PMPED firm rebranded in December as the Parker Law Group. 

One of Murdaugh’s brothers, Randy, remains with the firm, which dominates tiny Hampton, SC.

Bland also rejected the revenge killing theory that has been floated on and off for months — and which Murdaugh himself mentioned on the stand, claiming a social-media vigilante could have killed his family over Paul’s involvement in a fatal boat crash that left 19-year-old local Mallory Beach dead.

“Let’s be realistic,” Bland said. “If people are going to hire killers, those killers come with their own guns, probably burner guns without serial numbers.

“They torture you by killing your family in front of you and then they kill you. They wouldn’t have let Alex go free.”

A juror was dismissed from the trial Thursday — and she bizarrely told the judge she needed to collect the dozen eggs she had left in the jury room. 

The unnamed juror was apparently caught discussing the case outside the courtroom, which is prohibited during a trial. 

There is now just one alternate juror left, down from four.

Murdaugh also faces 99 charges related to alleged financial crimes that will be adjudicated at a later trial.