Crime scene expert says Murdaugh was too tall to have fired the shots that killed his wife and son
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Alex Murdaugh’s defense claimed today that he could not have fired the shots that killed Maggie because he is too tall.
The defense called in Mike Sutton, a crime scene expert, who presented a 3D reconstruction with models of a shooter between 5 foot 2 inches and 5 foot 4 inches tall holding a rifle.
Sutton testified that the trajectory of the bullets that struck the quail pen and dog house near where Maggie’s body was found meant the shooter likely fired from the hip.
He testified that if Alex, who is 6-foot-4, had taken the shot, his “shooting hand would have had to have been below the kneecap.”
The expert said that ‘it makes it very unlikely that a tall person would take the shots… In my opinion it is very unlikely [Alex] fired.’
The defense called in Mike Sutton, a crime scene expert, who presented a 3D reconstruction with models of shooters between 5 foot 2 inches and 5 foot 4 inches tall holding a rifle. He testified about the trajectories of the bullets that struck a quail pen under the shed and doghouse near where Maggie’s body was found.
The defense produced photographs showing the 6-foot-4 Alex, one taken in jail and the other in the courtroom last week.
Buster, Maggie, Paul and Alex. The disgraced legal scion is accused of shooting his wife and son to death at the family’s hunting lodge in Moselle on the night of June 7, 2021.
Sutton told the court that he measured Alex, known to his family as ‘Big Red, this morning and that his kneecap was 25 inches from the ground.
The pundit said: ‘It puts them in an unrealistic shooting position. It is not an aiming position. It is not a shooting position. It would be more than just a standing shooting position.
‘You would have to be crouching and have your shooting hand at or below the kneecap. It just makes it very unlikely that a tall person would have taken that shot,” he added.
The court previously heard from Buster Murdaugh, who testified that his father is 6-foot-4.
The 26-year-old took the stand to describe how his father had called him on the phone the night of the murders on June 7, 2021.
Alex, 54, asked his son if he was ‘sitting down’. “He sounded weird and he told me that my mother and brother had been shot,” Buster testified.
A hole in the feeding room window where Paul was killed with a shotgun.
A measurement made from the window to the trees behind the kennels where the pellets hit.
Mike Sutton, a crime scene expert for the defense, conducts evidence at the Moselle estate.
Blood on the floor of the feeding room where Paul Murdaugh was shot and killed
Eagle-eyed viewers spotted an alligator’s head resting on a side table in the Moselle home’s living room. The defense was providing evidence as to whether a shot could have been heard from the main house when Maggie and Paul were killed.
He also revealed that he and his father went on vacation to Lake Keowee with Maggie’s parents, her uncle and aunt, and their children ten days after the murders.
Buster was asked about his father’s second interview with police, telling jurors that Alex said, ‘they did so badly’ when referring to Paul. The statement has been strongly challenged at trial, with the State alleging that Alex admitted: ‘I did so wrong.’
Defense witnesses are expected to last a week and then there will be closing arguments from opposing legal parties before jurors are dispatched to reach a verdict.
Sutton, a crime scene expert, told jurors that the bullets that hit the quail pen and the doghouse came from different directions. The first was fired from the right, while the second was fired from the left.
Buster, 26, said his full name, Richard Alexander Murdaugh Jr., as father Alex, 54, looked on with a smile. He was supported in court by his girlfriend Brooklynn White
Buster arrives at the Colleton County courthouse in Walterboro on Tuesday with his girlfriend Brooklynn White, who has supported him most days.
He showed the jury a computer visualization with green lines to show the flight path of the bullets.
The expert said the bullet from the quail pen was fired upwards, while the one that hit the doghouse was fired downwards.
The defense had previously suggested that Paul and Maggie were killed by two different shooters.
Maggie was killed with five rounds from a Blackout .300 assault rifle, while Paul was shot twice with a 12-gauge shotgun.
None of the murder weapons have ever been recovered, however the State argues that Alex used “family weapons” to kill Maggie and Paul.
Maggie’s body lies near the doghouse next to the shed that sits next to the kennels on the hunting property in Moselle, South Carolina.
The dog house (left) and the quail pen (against the wooden wall) in the kennels of the hunting estate in Moselle
Maggie’s blood-soaked body was found a few feet from the doghouse.
Sutton was hired by the defense and was at the crime scene in October 2022, more than a year after the shooting.
Although he said the scene had changed since the June 2021 murders, Sutton also looked at photos of evidence collected by SLED on the day of the murders.
Defense attorney Dick Harpootlian concluded by asking: ‘In reviewing the case file, did you see any evidence that state investigators did a bullet trajectory analysis like yours?’
Sutton said: ‘No.’