Murdaugh’s defense prepares to fight suggestion he wrapped murder weapons inside a blue raincoat

Alex Murdaugh’s defense is preparing this morning to fight the suggestion that he wrapped the murder weapons used to kill his wife and son inside a blue raincoat dumped at his mother’s house.

The State says the coat was covered in gun residue and found hidden in a closet at Libby Murdaugh’s Almeda home nine days after Maggie, 52, and Paul, 22, were killed on the estate of Libby Murdaugh. Family hunting, Moselle.

A forensic expert told the court yesterday that he found 38 particles of gunshot residue on the inside and outside of the coat. He found so many, in fact, that he gave up looking in the jacket. John Meadors for the State asked if a firearm might have been wrapped inside the coat. She confirmed that it was a possibility.

Murdaugh’s defense argued yesterday that Libby Murdaugh’s caretaker saw his client bring a blue tarp into the house, not the raincoat. Now they are ready to question the relevance of the gunshot residue given that the family spent most days hunting hogs on their sprawling 1,700-acre ranch in the South Carolina Lowcountry.

The prosecution is still making its case in the double murder trial at the Colleton County Courthouse in Westboro.

Murdaugh, 54, is accused of shooting his wife and son to death in the estate’s kennels in an attempt to divert attention from the millions he had embezzled from his law firm.

On the day of the murders, June 7, 2021, he was confronted by the company’s CFO about more than $792,000 that he had stolen. Prosecutors say this was just the tip of the iceberg and that ‘the walls were closing in’.

The jury will hear more evidence of his financial crimes later Wednesday after Judge Clifton Newman ruled it admissible.

The defense fought to uphold the testimony of seven state witnesses for the jury, arguing there is no “logical connection” between their financial crimes and the murders of Maggie and Paul.

But the judge granted the prosecution’s motion Monday because the crimes “are so intimately connected and so explanatory that they are vital to the context and essential to telling the full story.”

Giving evidence about the blue raincoat yesterday, State Law Enforcement Division (SLED) Agent Megan Fletcher testified that she found a large amount of gunshot residue inside the jacket and he said it was consistent with firing a weapon while using it backwards or being wrapped around a recently fired weapon.

Defense attorneys said prosecutors did not connect the jacket to Murdaugh through confusing testimony from Murdaugh’s mother’s caretaker, who said he brought “something blue” into the home around 6:30 a.m., nine days after it was reported. the murderers.

Witnesses have testified that the Murdaugh family often fired guns and hunted on their property and the defense said the residue cannot be linked to a specific weapon.

The defense did an ‘effective job on cross-examination in raising doubts about the credibility of the witness. And that is exactly the job that the jury has to do: weigh the credibility of the witness,’ said the judge.

But Newman’s decisions could also help the defense. If Murdaugh is found guilty, the decisions could be appealed.

The additional witnesses will extend a trial that reached its 12th day on Tuesday with no end in sight for the prosecution’s case.

The jury heard Tuesday from Ronnie Crosby, Murdaugh’s law partner of more than two decades.

Crosby testified for the prosecution that Murdaugh told him and other legal partners that he was never at the pound the night of the shooting and later became the third witness to identify Murdaugh’s voice along with his wife and son on a video of the kennel about five minutes. before investigators say they were murdered.

Crosby was emotional and took his time responding several times during his testimony. Prosecutor Creighton Waters asked Crosby if he had had a drink after an associate called him at Crosby’s house and showed him a folder with evidence that Murdaugh was stealing money.

“Yeah, ultimately more than one,” Crosby said.

Crosby did not go to a meeting the next day where other partners confronted Murdaugh and he resigned. But he said he was told Murdaugh told his colleagues that he “knew he was going to get caught at some point.”

On cross-examination, Crosby said he arrived at the Murdaugh home about an hour after the bodies were found on the night of the murders. She got close enough to the bodies to know what type of ammunition was fired and said state troopers never appeared to search Murdaugh’s home.

The next day, after the state troopers had left, Crosby said he and another coworker saw buckshot still near the scene of the shooting and thought they would collect it in case it was important evidence.

It was so bad. We thought at some point we were going to clean it up. But it overwhelmed both me and my partner Mark,” Crosby said.

Tuesday’s testimony began with Jeanne Seckinger, office manager and chief financial officer of the law firm the Murdaugh family founded more than a century ago.

Murdaugh took money from legal settlements that was supposed to go to clients by sending it to a fake company he set up that had a similar name to the company the law firm intended to send it to, Seckinger said. The actual company would then have delivered the money to the firm’s clients.

Seckinger said he confronted Murdaugh over nearly $800,000 in missing law firm fees on the day of the murders. But during the conversation, Murdaugh discovered that the doctors had told his father that he would die in a few days. Seckinger said all the pain ended with the investigation of the missing fees until things calmed down.

After an extensive investigation, the firm determined that Murdaugh took more than $5 million from clients and is in the process of paying them all that was owed to them, Seckinger said.

For nearly two hours, Seckinger reviewed dozens of checks that Murdaugh sent to his fake company. He then asked why the law firm had to pay back the money.

“Alex had stolen it,” Seckinger said over and over again.

On cross-examination, he agreed with defense attorney Jim Griffin that Murdaugh faces criminal charges for each client.

Griffin also asked Seckinger if it was true that Murdaugh started stealing in 2011, “about 10 years before the Maggie and Paul murders?”

‘That’s right. He managed to fool a lot of people, including myself,” Seckinger said.