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After weeks of testimony, a South Carolina court finally heard Thursday from Alex Murdaugh, who is facing two counts of murder in the deaths of his wife and son.
The disgraced former attorney pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder and two weapons charges in the killings of his wife, Margaret “Maggie” Murdaugh, and son, Paul Murdaugh, on June 7, 2021, at the family’s home in Islandton.
Prosecutors accuse Murdaugh of killing his wife and son to distract from an array of alleged financial crimes, in which he separately faces another 99 charges, and rested their case last week.
The defense has painted Murdaugh as a loving father and husband being wrongfully accused after what it says has been a poorly handled investigation. Here are some of the key moments from his first day of testimony:
Murdaugh confirms he lied repeatedly to investigators
Murdaugh admitted for the first time publicly that he lied to investigators about his whereabouts on the night in June 2021, when the killings of his wife and son took place.
The former lawyer acknowledged his voice is heard in a video that appeared to be filmed at the dog kennels where the bodies of his wife and son were found. Prosecutors have used the video to put Murdaugh at the scene of the killings, contradicting his repeated statements to law enforcement that he had not been there that night.
Numerous witnesses had testified his voice is in the background of the video recorded by Paul at 8:44 p.m. June 7, 2021.
“Mr. Murdaugh, is that you on the kennel video at 8:44 p.m. on June 7,” defense attorney Jim Griffin asked, “the night Maggie and Paul were murdered?”
“It is,” Murdaugh said.
‘I wasn’t thinking clearly’
Murdaugh said he lied about being at the kennels earlier that evening because of “paranoid thinking” stemming from his drug addiction.
“I did lie to them,” he said, blaming his addiction to opiate painkillers.
“I wasn’t thinking clearly,” he added. “I don’t think I was capable of reason, and I lied about being down there, and I’m so sorry that I did.”
Still, Murdaugh was emphatic in his denial that he shot and killed his wife and son, insisting in response to Griffin’s questions, “I didn’t shoot my wife or my son, anytime, ever.”
Murdaugh says after visiting the kennels, he returned to his house and then visited his mother
Murdaugh testified that on the night his son and wife were killed, he stepped out of his house after dinner to attend to the dogs in the kennels, after which he went back inside his house and laid down on a couch.
Afterward, he decided to go visit his mother, an Alzheimer’s disease patient, in nearby Almeda, he said.
Murdaugh said his wife “wasn’t planning to go with me that night,” adding, “Maggie didn’t really like to visit my mom.”
Murdaugh told the court that on his way back from his mother’s house, he tried to call his wife twice, but she did not answer. He said he also left her a text. However, he said he did not find her non-response unusual, because she was with Paul and because of sometimes-spotty cell service.
‘I took money that was not mine’
Murdaugh admitted Thursday to stealing from his law firm and his clients, which ultimately led to his resignation from the firm, then known as PMPED and since renamed Parker Law Group.
“I admit, candidly, in all of these cases, Mr. Waters, that I took money that was not mine, and I shouldn’t have done it,” Murdaugh said in response to prosecutor Creighton Waters during the prosecution’s cross-examination.
“I hate the fact that I did it. I’m embarrassed by it. I’m embarrassed for my son,” he said.
“I’m embarrassed for my family, and I don’t dispute that I did it,” he continued.
Murdaugh gets emotional while talking about his son
Murdaugh became visibly upset after his defense attorney asked him if he had a good time with his son Paul on the day prior to his killing.
“You could not be around Paul-Paul (Paul Murdaugh) – you could not be around him and not have a good time,” said Alex Murdaugh, who broke down crying.
“Were you close to Paul?” defense attorney Griffin asked.
Still crying, Murdaugh replied, “You couldn’t be any closer” than he was with Paul and his other surviving son, Buster.
‘I saw what y’all have seen pictures of’
Murdaugh broke down in tears on Thursday as he described seeing the bodies of his wife and son at the family’s dog kennels the night they were killed.
Upon returning to the house in Islandton after visiting his mother, Murdaugh said, Margaret and Paul weren’t there – and he assumed they still were at the kennels, so he went back there.
“What’d you see?” Griffin asked him.
“I saw what y’all have seen pictures of,” he told his defense attorney, crying and taking a pause before saying it was “so bad.”
Murdaugh recalled calling 911 and “trying to tend” to Paul and Maggie, going back and forth between them while on the phone. Paul’s injuries were particularly bad, Murdaugh said, and he recalled trying to check his son’s body for a pulse and trying to turn him over.
“I don’t know why I tried to turn him over,” an emotional Murdaugh said. “I mean, my boy’s laying face down. He’s done the way he’s done. His head was the way his head was. I could see his brain laying on the sidewalk. I didn’t know what to do.”
Murdaugh says he was ‘nowhere near’ son and wife when they were shot
Murdaugh’s lawyer asked him, “Did you get, on your shirt, high-velocity blood spatter from being within the distance of shooting of Maggie or Paul?
Murdaugh said, “There’s no way I had high-velocity blood spatter on me.”
“I have seen reports that said that,” he added. “I was nowhere near Paul and Maggie when they got shot.”
Murdaugh explains phone activity after killings
Murdaugh rebutted earlier testimony about data collected from his cell phone, which showed he searched Google for a restaurant in Edisto Beach , and read a group text message soon after finding the bodies.
Any of those actions were “unintentional,” he said, adding he was trying to call his brothers and a family friend.
“I’m not trying to call those people. I’m not doing a Google search for any Whaley’s restaurant and I’m certainly not reading any text,” he said.
“I can promise you I wasn’t reading any text messages,” Murdaugh said when asked about the group text message.
‘My addiction is to opiate painkillers’
Murdaugh testified he believes his addiction stemmed from surgery he got for an old college football injury. He said he needed a few surgeries, and he started getting addicted to hydrocodone around 2004 before moving on to oxycodone around 2008.
“My addiction is to opiate painkillers, specifically oxycodone, OxyContin,” he said. “It just escalates. It escalates.”
Murdaugh said he went to a detox facility three times, and he’s been drug-free for “535 days – and I’m very proud of that.”
Murdaugh describes how he asked a man to shoot him
Murdaugh explained how in September 2021, two months after the killings, he decided to ask a man who he was initially intending to get pills from to instead shoot him.
When asked if that drug transaction actually happened, Murdaugh said he didn’t know because after withdrawal symptoms started, Murdaugh said he changed his plan.
“Not to get the pills from him anymore, and instead I asked him to shoot me,” Murdaugh said when asked to clarify what that meant.
“I meant for him to shoot me so I would be gone,” Murdaugh testified.
Murdaugh was shot in the head on a roadway on September 4, 2021, but survived. That same month, he turned himself in after admitting he asked a former client to kill him during a fake car breakdown so Murdaugh’s oldest son, Buster, could get an insurance payout, police said.
CNN’s Dakin Andone, Dianne Gallagher, Randi Kaye and Alta Spells contributed to this report.
