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Jurors in the Alex Murdaugh murder trial were shown a Snapchat video of the legal heir filmed an hour before his death wearing a different outfit than the clean white T-shirt cops found him in after he called 911. claiming to have found his bloody son. bodies.
Murdaugh is on trial in South Carolina for the murders of his wife Maggie and son Paul, who were shot to death at the family’s hunting lodge in June 2021.
Prosecutors are still making their case, which includes a video they say shows Alex at the crime scene moments before the couple were shot to death.
He denies the murders and says he was visiting his elderly mother when the couple was shot.
Yesterday, the jury was shown a video showing Alex trying to plant a tree on the property. It was taken at 7:56 pm and shows him in a light blue shirt and khaki pants.
7:56 p.m.: Alex Murdaugh appears in a Snapchat video filmed by his son Paul. He is wearing a blue shirt and khaki pants, and he is planting a tree in the family garden.
10:20 PM: Alex called 911 at 10:07 PM, claiming he had just returned home from visiting his elderly mother to find his wife and son dead, their bodies covered in blood. He was wearing a crisp white T-shirt and shorts.
At 8:44 p.m., Paul filmed a video of a dog he was guarding, in which prosecutors say Alex’s voice can be heard.
All activity on Maggie and Paul’s cell phones came to a sudden halt after that video was shot.
At 10:07 p.m., Alex Murdaugh called 911 and claimed that he had just returned from his mother’s house to find his wife and son dead.
She later described a gruesome scene, telling police officers that she turned her son’s bloody body over to feel for a pulse and that she could see his ‘brains’.
Dashboard and body cam footage shows him in a crisp white T-shirt and shorts.
Yesterday, prosecutors pointed out to the jury that it had changed, but offered no explanation for it.
Murdaugh’s attorneys have yet to offer an explanation for the outfit change.
00:56: Murdaugh in a police car. He described being able to see the ‘brain’ of his son.
Maggie and Paul Murdaugh (left) were murdered in June 2021. He denies the murders. His eldest son, Buster, is shown on the right.
They had claimed in opening statements that the video would help exonerate their client and that it showed how loving he was as a father.
Today, the judge will decide whether prosecutors can reveal to the jury that Alex was drowning in debt and stealing from his law firm.
He has been accused of embezzling millions from the firm.
The jury has yet to hear of those crimes, which the prosecution says paint a picture of a desperate man trying to hold on to what he has left.
Alex sobbed in court yesterday when the jury was shown the video of Paul playing with the dog.
His friend, the owner of the dog that was to receive the video, testified that the voices in the background of the video were undoubtedly those of Alex and Maggie.
Alex’s mother, whom he says he was visiting at the time of the murders, is “on her deathbed”.
The 83-year-old woman suffers from Alzheimer’s and is not among the witnesses on either the state’s or the defense’s list.
Yesterday, Rogan Gibson, who has described the Murdaughs as his ‘second family’, listened to a video taken by Paul at 8:44pm at the kennel where the 22-year-old was shot to death with his mother Maggie shortly after 8:49 p.m. last June. 7, 2021.
Gibson told the jury that he was sure he could hear Paul, Maggie and Alex in the footage. Paul had promised to send Gibson the video of his dog he was caring for, but it was never sent despite the couple having spoken on the phone moments before.
Prosecutors say Paul was unable to send the video as promised because Murdaugh had shot him to death with a shotgun before pointing a rifle at his mother.
Gibson’s testimony contradicts Murdaugh’s claim that the last time he saw Maggie, 52, and Paul alive was when they were having dinner at the home in Islandton, South Carolina.
The disgraced lawyer, 54, told police he only saw them at the kennels when he returned from his mother’s house to find them dead.
Gibson testified that Paul used his phone “a lot” and had been in frequent communication with him that night.
At 8:40 pm, the two friends had a phone call about Gibson’s Labrador during which he told jurors he was “99 percent” sure he could hear Murdaugh in the background.
Gibson said they were discussing a problem the dog had with his tail and Paul said he would try to Facetime him to show him what he looked like.
However, the reception at the estate was such that Paul told Gibson that he would send him a video if that didn’t work out.
Records show that a few seconds after his phone call ended, Paul attempted to Facetime Gibson; that call lasted only 11 seconds.
Paul then recorded the video of Gibson’s dog in which his friend says he can hear Alex, Maggie and Paul together.
But never sent it.
Gibson then texted Paul about the dog at 8:49 p.m., but the message went unanswered.
She also tried calling five times and even texted her mother at 9:34 pm asking Maggie to call her back.
Gibson told the court that he found out about the murders early the next morning. He drove to Moselle, as Murdaugh’s property is known, to pick up his dog and then met with detectives.
They asked to see his phone and he described having a phone conversation with Paul about a problem with his dog’s tail the night before at 8:40 p.m.
Murdaugh wept at the defense table as the video was played in court on Wednesday. Paul’s voice can be heard talking to the dog as he tries to film its tail, the prosecution says a woman speaking in the background is Maggie, and the third male voice heard is Murdaugh.
Gibson told police he was “99% sure” he could hear Murdaugh’s voice in the background during that call.
Gibson told jurors that he met with police again on November 22 and was shown the video Paul took of his dogs at the kennels.
Prosecutor Creighton Waters asked: ‘Did you recognize the voices of your second family?’
Gibson said, ‘I did it.’
Waters asked Gibson if he ever talked to Murdaugh about hearing his voice on the video.
MURDAUGH’S LAST TEXT AND CALLS TO HIS WIFE: At 9:47 pm, Alex Murdaugh texted Maggie and said, “Call me baby.” The prosecution says that she had been dead for almost an hour at this point. The phone also shows Maggie’s missed calls, including five from Alex on the night of the murders.
LAST TEXTS FROM PAUL’S FRIEND ROGAN GIBSON TO MAGGIE AND PAUL: Gibson texted Paul about his dog being cared for at Murdaugh Kennel at 8:49pm following a conversation they had by phone. That message went unanswered. Gibson then texted Maggie at 9:34 p.m., saying, “Tell Paul to call me.”
‘No, sir,’ he told the court.
Waters continued: ‘Isn’t that a topic you’d like to talk about?’
Gibson replied: ‘That’s correct.’
The young man said he spent a lot of time on the Moselle after the murders and recalled telling Maggie’s mother, Kennedy Branstetter, whom Gibson knows affectionately as a grandmother, that he ‘heard Mr Alec’ in the kennels.
Waters asked: ‘Did you [Murdaugh] stand up and say, no, I wasn’t there?’
Gibson replied, “He didn’t.”
Murdaugh claims that he had dinner with Maggie and Paul around 8:15 before they headed to the kennels. He told police that he stayed at the house, falling asleep in front of the television. He then woke up and drove to visit his mother, who is in the last stages of Alzheimer’s disease, around 9 p.m.
He says the next time he saw his wife and son was when he came home to find them dead in the kennels.
Murdaugh called 911 at 10:07 p.m.