(Washington) After six weeks of eagerly watched hearings across the United States, influential attorney Alex Murdaugh was found guilty on Thursday of murdering his wife and son.
“The evidence of guilt is overwhelming,” Judge Clifton Newman said after the verdict was read.
Standing in the room, Alex Murdaugh showed no emotion, only blinking repeatedly.
The jurors needed just under three hours of deliberation to reach their decision.
Alex Murdaugh faces life imprisonment. His sentence is due Friday morning.
This 54-year-old notable was accused of having stolen crazy sums from his law firm, his friends and even the son of his cleaning lady, and of having shot his relatives to avoid being unmasked.
“He deceived everyone”, but “don’t be fooled” by this “master liar”, prosecutor Creighton Waters had launched on Wednesday to the address of the jurors, asking them to return a guilty verdict.
“Why would he kill the two people he loved the most in the world? “, retorted his lawyer Jim Griffin on Thursday, denouncing a “absurd theory”. Stressing the absence of material evidence, he pleaded acquittal.
Maggie Murdaugh, 52, and Paul Murdaugh, 22, were shot and killed on June 7, 2021, near the kennel of their huge South Carolina property, called Moselle.
The jurors went there on Thursday to better understand the layout of the premises. It was the first time in a month and a half that the television cameras were kept away from the proceedings.
Because the case fascinates in the United States, where all the media, including the most serious, have dissected the life of this opulent family, proud of its three generations of local prosecutors and judges, as well as the drift of the father.
A documentary, Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandalis also one of the most watched programs on Netflix, with 40 million hours watched in the country last week.
“Illusion”
Throughout the trial, news channels broadcast live the parade of defrauded colleagues and friends, who recounted how Alex Murdaugh stole millions of dollars from them without their realizing it.
These frauds, which he admitted, blaming them on bad investments and an addiction to opiates, were uncovered after the double murder and will be tried later.
According to the prosecution, in June 2021, several people had however begun to ask questions, in particular within the framework of an investigation into the death of a young girl in a boat accident piloted by her son Paul.
“The whole illusion of his life was going to crumble, he couldn’t stand it,” prosecutor Waters assured.
For him, Alex Murdaugh killed his loved ones in order to buy time, before trying to end his life in a new scam. At the beginning of September, he had asked an accomplice to kill him so that his surviving son could receive 10 million dollars in life insurance. The bullet had just grazed him.
“Reverse”
The defense questioned the plausibility of this “illogical” theory: “he would have killed to divert attention in a financial investigation, by placing himself at the heart of a criminal investigation and a media storm? “, was surprised Me Griffin, pointing out the absence of DNA or traces of blood to incriminate him.
Alex Murdaugh, familiar with the investigations because of his profession, manipulated the crime scene, changing his clothes or erasing the history of conversations, replied the prosecutor. He also “made up an alibi” by visiting his senile mother and making calls right after the crime, Creighton Waters said.
“But there is one thing he couldn’t control,” said the prosecutor: a video filmed by his son a few minutes before he died, in which we hear the voice of the father, when he still had denied going near the kennel that evening.
Last week, in harrowing testimony, the disgraced lawyer admitted to the lie, attributing it to paranoia caused by his drug addiction, while maintaining that he did not commit the double murder.
When he is confronted with the truth, “he backtracks, pivots and invents a new story”, reacted the prosecutor.