Alex Murdo convicted of killing his wife and son

WALTERBORO, South Carolina (AP) — Disgraced South Carolina lawyer Alex Murdo was found guilty of Thursday’s murder by shooting of his wife and son in a case that chronicles the disintegration of a powerful Southern family with tales of privilege, greed and addiction.

The jury deliberated for less than three hours before finding Murdo guilty of two counts of murder at the end of a six-week trial.

Murdo, 54, faces 30 years to life in prison without parole after sentencing, which in South Carolina is usually given immediately after sentencing but can be suspended by a judge.

Alex Murdo’s lawyer said Thursday state agents were so determined to get the disgraced South Carolina lawyer convicted of the murders of his wife and son that they lied or distorted evidence.

As the closing arguments drew to a close, the judge handed Murdo’s fate over to the jury, giving them his final instructions, and they headed to their jury room to begin deliberations.

Attorney Jim Griffin gave the defense’s conclusion, emphasizing Murdo’s main point: investigators focused solely on him and conducted the investigation so poorly that no evidence pointing to anyone else, such as fingerprints or possible DNA on Maggie’s or Paul Murdo’s clothes, and was not collected.

“How could he kill Maggie and Paul without leaving a trail of evidence in minutes?” Griffin said.

Murdo, 54, faces 30 years to life in prison if found guilty. Investigators said his 22-year-old son Paul was shot twice with a shotgun and his 52-year-old wife Maggie was shot four or five times with a rifle outside a dog kennel on their suburban property in Colleton County on June 7. , 2021.

Prosecutors got the final word with a rebuttal of the argument after Griffin spoke.

“You can’t answer all the questions, and the law doesn’t require that,” Attorney John Meadors said.

Investigators believe that Murdo had no more than 17 minutes from the moment his wife and son stopped using mobile phones to the moment he left the house to visit his sick mother.

Experts on both sides agreed that there must have been massive amounts of blood, tissue and other materials from the killings, but the prosecution did not provide any evidence of blood spatter on the clothing. The weapon in the case was never found.

“He had 17 minutes. He needed to be a wizard to make all that evidence disappear,” Griffin said.

No one tried to look for DNA on the clothes of the victims, which the killer could have left. According to Griffin, no one has tried to find out if fingerprints or shoe prints can be extracted from the blood around Paul Murdo and matched to a possible killer.

Prosecutors believe that Alex Murdo killed his wife and son because he feared years of stealing millions of dollars from his law firm and clients would be exposed and his high position in society would collapse. They said he hoped their deaths would make him a sympathetic figure and divert attention from the missing money.

Motive is not a necessary element to prove a crime. But Rachel Fizet, an attorney in Los Angeles, said prosecutors painstakingly laid out a motive to answer a question she thinks jurors should be concerned about.

“I don’t think there can be any condemnation without answering this long drawn out question about why Alex Murdo killed his family,” Fiset said.

The key piece of evidence for prosecutors is the videotape of the voices of Murdo, his wife and son at the nursery just minutes before investigators said they were murdered. The video was not discovered for a year because agents were initially unable to hack into his son’s iPhone.

For 20 months, Alex Mudo told everyone that he was not at the kennel, but while testifying in his own defense, he finally admitted that he was there.

“He lied because that’s what drug addicts do. He lied because he has a closet full of skeletons,” Griffin said.

Prosecutors said everything Murdo did was a lie – to the people he stole from, the police about a key fact in their investigation, his family about his drug use, and even the order in which he tested his wife and son for signs of life. . , changing those whom he checked first of all in different police interrogations.

Griffin said it showed how badly the state wanted to convict Murdo at all costs, citing prosecutors’ closing argument in which they said the evidence showed that Maggie Murdo died while running to her son.

“Alex ran to his baby. Can you imagine what he saw? Griffin said. “And is it evidence of guilt that he does not remember what the sequence of actions was at that moment?”

Griffin said his time as a prosecutor hurt him when he said state law enforcement either fabricated or lied about the evidence.

The lead agent in the case said on the stand that he told the grand jury indicting Murdo 13 months after the deaths that the T-shirt Murdo was wearing when the police arrived had high-velocity blood spatter from his son, what happens when someone they are shooting. close range.

But other agents in the case have already said that further tests on the shirt showed no blood on it, and prosecutors never mentioned the shirt at trial.

Meadors said that law enforcement is not on trial, but Murdo.

The prosecutor said he was offended that Murdo’s defense alleges that law enforcement “didn’t do their job while he withholds justice and obstructs justice by not saying, ‘I was at the kennel’.”

And there was the issue of the blue raincoat, which state agents said was covered in gunpowder residue when found at Murdo’s mother’s house. Investigators speculated that Murdo wrapped the gun in it to hide on his parents’ property, but Murdo’s family didn’t recognize him and it wasn’t his size.

Griffin ended his closing argument with an address to the jury.

“On behalf of Alex, on behalf of Buster, on behalf of Maggie, and on behalf of my friend Paul, I respectfully ask you not to confuse one family tragedy with another,” Griffin said in a broken voice.

Earlier Thursday, Judge Clifton Newman suspended a juror for discussing the case with other people. Five jurors had to be changed over the course of a six-week trial, leaving jurors with only one alternate during deliberations that began at 3:50 pm EST on Thursday.

Newman’s exchange with the jury on Thursday was a pleasant one. He asked her if she needed a bailiff to take some of her belongings out of the jury room. She said she had a purse and a dozen eggs that a fellow juror brought to each juror from his farm.

Fiset said the single lieutenant juror marks a worrying development given the disease risk associated with COVID-19. In the case of less direct evidence, she expects a longer discussion – and a longer period during which members remain healthy.

“They are one person away from this jury trial because this is a mistrial,” Fiset said.

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