Two people likely responsible for Murdaugh murder: expert

A blood-spatter expert testified Monday in Alex Murdaugh’s double murder trial that two people are likely responsible for the slaying — not one.

University of New Haven professor Timothy Palmbach, who was called by the defense, told the Colleton County Court “the totality of the evidence” suggests Maggie and Paul Murdaugh were killed in a “two shooter scenario.”

Palmbach said it’s clear Paul — who was found dead next to his mother in the property of the the family’s Islandton, South Carolina hunting lodge — was killed by someone standing directly over him who, in his opinion, most likely put the gun right on his head.

Noting “large amounts of tissue that were projected all the way up onto the ceiling and the door… hair all the way up into the door, and of course…blood literally everywhere,” the forensic expert said the person who shot him was likely injured due to the close range killing.

“Minimally, that shooter is getting covered with his material, getting more or less the shock wave of that effect and more than likely getting hit with at least something that could have done injury — a bone fragment and or a pellet fragment,” Palmbach said. “I think that particular shooter for a brief period of time is, is kind of out of this.”

Paul, 22, was killed with a shotgun while his mother, 52, was killed with a rifle, but Palmbach believes the two were killed shortly after one another. He said the evidence also points to Paul being shot first.

“It’s not as if [the shooter] could instantaneously suffer that, drop the shotgun and run to wherever the rifle is and then, in any kind of a reasonable time period, engage in a meaningful assault” of Maggie, he said.

The expert then said he doesn’t think it’s practical to imagine one shooter bringing both weapons to the scene. 

Palmbach said he believes Maggie was in motion while she shot despite facing the shooter.

Alex Murdaugh pled not guilty to the June 2021 murders, and has repeatedly broken down during the trial, especially when he described the scene where he said he came acrioss his son and wife’s dead bodies. His son Paul had no defensive wounds, according to Palmbach, who said the 22-year-old was likely “startled by that shot.”