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The mysterious blue raincoat Prosecutors say Alex Murdaugh took over his parents’ home days after the double murder of his wife and son was revealed in court.
Prosecutors say the coat was covered in gun residue and that his mother’s caretaker saw it when he arrived at the home in Almeda at 6:30 a.m. Moselle, South Carolina.
But the defense claims that Shelley Smith actually saw a blue tarp and, during cross-examination, confirmed that she could never have mistaken a tarp for a jacket.
He initially told jurors that he saw Murdaugh, 54, wearing a “blue something” and later told the court that he saw a tarp on a chair the next day.
Although Smith did not state emphatically what he saw, the State asserts that a blue jacket found covered in gunshot residue in a closet at Murdaugh’s parents’ home is relevant to his case.
Defense attorney Jim Griffin lifts the blue tarp. The defense disputes that Murdaugh’s mother’s caretaker saw him in the blue jacket (right) and instead says it was the tarp. The jacket is seen with tape markings applied by investigators.
Alex Murdaugh, center, is escorted into the Colleton County courthouse before his double murder trial in Walterboro, South Carolina, on Monday.
Smith described seeing Murdaugh yesterday on the night of the murders and how he seemed “unsettled” as he lay with his mother, who is in the last stages of Alzheimer’s disease.
Murdaugh stayed for about 20 minutes, lying next to his mother and holding her hand, Smith said. He also noted that he periodically checked his phone that night, June 7, 2021.
He came to his mother’s house wearing a T-shirt and shorts, Smith testified, adding that she saw no blood on him and no blood was left in his mother’s room.
When the cops arrived at the crime scene later that night, he too was wearing a clean T-shirt and shorts.
Smith testified that nine days after the murders, Murdaugh visited his parents’ house at 6:30 a.m., which he said was “unusually” early.
She said Murdaugh was holding “something blue” in his hand that looked like a duffel or jacket. She later found a blue jacket at Murdaugh’s parents’ house covered in gun residue.
The caretaker wept as she described how he deliberately told her that he was with her mother for 30 to 40 minutes the night of the murders.
Smith said this made her “nervous” because she remembered that he had only been there for 15 or 20 minutes. She was so concerned by the contradiction that she later told her police brother about the conversation.
During the visit, Murdaugh asked her about her upcoming wedding and mentioned that he could help her with the bill.
The defense questioned Smith about whether he had seen a tarp or a jacket.
Defense attorney Jim Griffin collected the seized blue tarp from Murdaugh’s parents’ home and asked her if that was what she had seen.
Smith confirmed that it was, and also agreed with him that he couldn’t mistake it for a raincoat.
Griffin spent several minutes getting Smith to say that the item was large, like a tarp, not a raincoat.
Establishing whether it was a tarpaulin or a raincoat is crucial because the latter was covered in weapons residue.
Muschelle ‘Shelly’ Smith (left), the caretaker for Murdaugh’s elderly mother, Elizabeth ‘Libby’ Alexander Murdaugh (right), recounted how she spoke to the suspected killer on the night of the murders.
The defense and prosecution teams discussed yesterday whether Smith saw a blue jacket (left and right) or a blue tarp.
Alex Murdaugh pictured with his wife Maggie and their two sons Paul (left) and Buster
The defense then asked Judge Clifton Newman to prevent other witnesses from testifying about the raincoat, but Newman initially refused.
A state trooper testified that the blue jacket was found at Murdaugh’s mother’s home by agents looking for a blue tarp three months after the murders.
Before a state agent could testify as to whether anything was found in the garment, the defense again asked the judge to stop the witness from testifying further.
“They have no evidence connecting Mr. Murdaugh to that waterproof jacket,” Griffin said.
Newman ruled Tuesday against the defense, refusing to strike Smith’s evidence from the record.
‘I believe that it is relevant and that it creates, by inference, facts that are in dispute in this case. I deny the motion to quash your testimony, if that is the motion. I deny the motion to declare her testimony irrelevant,” he said.
The judge also denied that the gun residue evidence is prejudicial before stating that what Smith said was clearly inconclusive.
“The witness was so out of control with her testimony and she was still confused,” he said.
The judge added that she was “unable to articulate her thoughts” due to her emotion and the weight of the stage.
Judge Clifton Newman granted the indictment because “financial crimes are so intimately connected and self-explanatory that they are vital to the context and essential to telling the full story.”
Jurors will hear evidence of Murdaugh’s financial crimes today after the judge ruled it admissible, a major blow to the defense.
Judge Newman granted the prosecution’s motion Monday because the crimes “are so intimately connected and explanatory that they are vital to the context and essential to telling the full story.”
The State called seven witnesses in absentia for the jury during the final three days of the trial to provide explosive evidence about how Murdaugh’s life was spiraling out of control and “Hannibal was at the door.”
The defense fought to hide that evidence from the jury, arguing that there is “no logical connection” between the financial impropriety and the murders.
But Judge Newman said: “I think the jury is entitled to consider whether Mr. Murdaugh’s apparent desperation over his dire financial situation, the threat of discovery for committing the crimes for which he was later indicted, resulted in the commission of of the alleged crimes.
The decision means jurors in the coming days will hear from witnesses who previously testified before a judge about how Murdaugh secured $4 million in settlements for the family of Murdaugh’s housekeeper who died in a fall. She supposedly kept the money.
Other testimony includes the office manager confronting Murdaugh over $792,000 in missing law firm fees on the day of the murders and how a key hearing in a wrongful death lawsuit was scheduled that could reveal the true condition of Murdaugh’s finances for three days after his wife and son were killed. Shooting. The hearing was cancelled.
Newman’s decision to allow evidence of Alex Murdaugh’s possible financial misdeeds came after hearing from a potential witness Monday: a lawyer representing a family that sued Murdaugh over a boating accident that killed Mallory Beach, 19 years old, in 2019.
At the time of Paul’s death, Murdaugh was facing a lawsuit for allowing his son to drive his boat under the influence of alcohol when 19-year-old Mallory (left and right) was killed in February 2019. Murdaugh told the policeman that Paul and Maggie had killed in revenge for the accident
Beach family attorney Mark Tinsley (left) recalled being confronted by Murdaugh (right) who tried to “intimidate” him at a fundraiser attended by trial attorneys for either state Sen. Dick Harpootlian or US Senator Lindsey Graham in 2019. Harpootlian is also a member of Murdaugh. defense attorney in murder trial
Alex’s son, Paul Murdaugh, was driving the boat and was facing a felony charge of boating under the influence at the time of his death.
When Alex Murdaugh called 911 and first spoke to investigators after his wife and son were killed, he mentioned that people who knew Beach were angry with his son.
Beach family attorney Mark Tinsley said Alex Murdaugh and his lawyer were working hard to keep their financial information out of Tinsley’s hands when the murders occurred.
“I recognized pretty quickly that the case against Alex, if he was a victim of some vigilante, would in fact be over,” Tinsley said.
He said Murdaugh’s lawyer told him Alex Murdaugh was broke, but Tinsley didn’t believe him given what appeared to be a successful law practice and his family’s generational wealth. He said the court sought damages from Murdaugh because they couldn’t bring Beach back.
“The Beach family was left in the driveway for eight days while their daughter’s body was in the water,” Tinsley said. “I don’t know if there’s any amount of money that anyone would be willing to take to go through what he went through.”