Alex Murdaugh, Subject of Netflix and HBO Docuseries, Found Guilty of Murdering His Wife and Son

thewrap.com:

family annihilator” and that he was the one who shot and killed his 52-year-old wife Maggie and youngest son Paul, 22, on June 7, 2021 at the family’s estate in Colleton County, South Carolina.Defense attorney Griffin alleged that law enforcement was too hasty in zeroing in on Murdaugh as the killer, saying that his client’s self-confessed opiate addiction made him “an easy target for SLED (South Carolina Law Enforcement Division)… They started fabricating evidence against Alex.”Griffin also played a cellphone video taken by Paul in which he was talking to his mother and father about dogs around 8:44 p.m., just minutes before prosecutors say the shooting started. “Four minutes later, the state would have you believe that Alex Murdaugh up and blew his son’s brains out,” Griffin argued.In a win for the prosecution, Newman earlier ruled that the jury could hear evidence of Murdaugh’s financial difficulties, and “the apparent desperation” that may have motivated the defendant to murder his wife and son.

Prosecutor Waters cited cellphone data to place Murdaugh at the crime scene and that the former attorney shot his son Paul first. “She heard that shot and was running to her baby when she got mowed down by the only person that we have conclusive proof was at that scene just minutes before,” Waters told the jury on Wednesday.Murdaugh admitted he had been lying to his family “for years” and did not dispute Waters’ statement that he stole $3.7 million in 2019.

Waters argued that Murdaugh used the murders to buy time as his financial crimes were about to come to light.Before defense attorney Jim Griffin began his closing argument, Judge Newman removed one of the jurors for talking about the case outside the courtroom.