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Alex Murdaugh laughed today when his family’s kennel keeper testified at his double murder trial.
Roger Dale Davis told jurors he cleaned out the kennels the day Maggie, 52, and Paul, 22, were killed on their hunting ranch in Lowcountry South Carolina on June 7, 2021.
Davis drew laughter from the court when he said he went home that night and lay in his recliner for the rest of the night, as he normally would. The prosecutor asked: ‘And the day is done?’
“Done,” Davis replied emphatically, drawing laughter, including from Alex, 54, who had sobbed into a handkerchief the previous Tuesday as the jury heard the pathologist’s gruesome testimony about the horrific injuries Maggie and Paul sustained.
The handler previously told the court that he once shot an injured dog as a “mercy” because the legal offspring couldn’t bring himself to do it.
Alex Murdaugh smiles at parts of the testimony of Roger Dale Davis, who kept the dogs at Murdaugh’s home, during his double murder trial at the Colleton County courthouse on Tuesday.
Davis drew laughter from the court when he said he went home that night and lay in his recliner for the rest of the night, as he normally would. The prosecutor asked: ‘And the day is done?’ ‘Done,’ Davis replied emphatically.
Much of his evidence centered on his regular cleaning routine at the kennels. Davis was shown crime scene photos and he looked at the hose which he said he would never have left like that.
Jurors have heard evidence that Paul and Maggie’s bodies were saturated with water and blood when police arrived, despite the fact that it had not yet rained.
However, the defense later insinuated that Murdaugh had used the hose after shooting Maggie and Paul.
They played a video Paul took of his friend’s dog at 7:45 p.m. that night, after Davis had left. He shows the hose not ordered as the caretaker left it.
On the day of the murders, he said he cleaned the kennels in the afternoon before leaving at 4:30 p.m.
The prosecutor showed him photographs of the crime scene that night, including puddles of water on the kennel floor and the hose.
Davis testified that he never left the hose as it appeared in the photos.
He also said that no water would have collected in the kennels since he cleaned them, that someone else must have hosed them down again.
However, the suggestion that Murdaugh had used the hose after the shooting was rejected by defense attorney Jim Griffin.
He played a video taken by Paul at the kennels around 8:45 p.m. showing that the hose was not put away in the orderly manner that Davis said it had been.
However, when questioned by the prosecution about the footage, Davis said he could hear the voices of Alex, Paul and Maggie in the background.
Alex claims that he was never at the kennels that night, that he only got there after Maggie and Paul were killed.
Buster, Maggie, Paul and Alex Murdaugh. Buster was staying with his girlfriend near Charlotte at the time of the murders.
Buster arrives at court on Tuesday with his girlfriend Brooklynn White (pink shirt) and Alex’s sister Lynn trailing behind him.
Davis testified that he got to know the Murdaughs well while working on the estate.
He described Maggie as “so chill” and that they often chatted about the dogs.
Davis described Paul as “a bit wild and crazy” but would work the land and “do whatever his daddy needed him to do.”
He said that Alex wasn’t around much, that he was often at work, but found that he could be “very particular” about how he wanted things done.
Davis described the Murdaughs’ relationship as ‘loving’.
“I never saw that man even raise his voice to his wife and children,” he said. ‘Anything she wanted, or the boys wanted, he would try to get for them.’
Murdaugh liked to spend time hunting and drinking beer with Paul, Davis said.
The caretaker said he didn’t see Buster much, but he always seemed friendly to his father.