Alex Murdaugh ‘destroyed’ by fatal shootings of wife and son, surviving son testifies at double murder trial

Alex Murdaugh was “destroyed” by the fatal shootings of his wife and son, his surviving son testified in his father’s double murder trial Tuesday, as the defense worked to counter prosecutors’ allegations that Murdaugh is responsible for the killings.

“He was heartbroken. I walked in the door and saw him, gave him a hug,” Buster Murdaugh said of seeing his father in the hours after he learned his mother, Margaret “Maggie” Murdaugh, and younger brother, Paul Murdaugh, had been fatally shot. Alex Murdaugh was “just broken down,” Buster said, adding his father was crying and couldn’t really speak.

Buster Murdaugh is the third witness called by the defense, which began its case Friday after prosecutors called more than 60 witnesses to bolster their argument Alex Murdaugh, 54, killed his wife and son at the family’s Islandton estate on June 7, 2021, in an attempt to distract from his alleged financial crimes, which were being rapidly uncovered and for which he now faces 99 charges separately from the murders.

Alex Murdaugh has pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder and two weapons charges in the killings, and the defense has painted Murdaugh as a loving father and husband being wrongfully accused after what it says has been a poorly handled investigation.

Buster Murdaugh listens to his father Alex Murdaugh's double murder trial at the Colleton County Courthouse on February 7, 2023, in Walterboro, South Carolina. - Joshua Boucher/Pool/The State/AP

In the last three weeks of the trial, prosecutors have tried to overcome the lack of any direct evidence – such as an eyewitness – tying Murdaugh to the killings. Instead, their case has relied heavily on circumstantial evidence that they say shows Murdaugh lied to investigators and was at the scene just minutes before the killings.

His defense attorneys have criticized the prosecutors’ case as speculative and waved off their focus on his alleged financial schemes as irrelevant.

The defense appeared to suggest last week that the killings could be related to a financial dispute with a drug gang, saying Murdaugh was buying $50,000 worth of drugs each week from a man who was in significant debt to a gang.

Murdaugh’s lawyers have previously acknowledged he struggles with an opioid addiction and prosecutors presented evidence Friday showing Paul confronted his father about a stash of pills a month before he and his mother were killed.

The jury also has heard testimony about a roadside shooting that injured Murdaugh in September 2021, months after the killings. Authorities have alleged that Murdaugh arranged for another man to shoot him so that Buster could obtain millions of dollars in life insurance.

On Friday, the defense called their first two witnesses, including a coroner and spokesperson for the local Colleton County Sheriff’s Department.

Alex Murdaugh listens to testimony during trial proceedings on Friday. - Joshua Boucher/AP

Paul’s boat case ‘kind of consumed’ Maggie

Before his death, Paul Murdaugh was being bullied on social media and in public for his alleged involvement in a February 2019 boat crash that killed 19-year-old Mallory Beach, Buster Murdaugh testified, describing social media messages his brother received and confrontations in bars.

Paul had pleaded not guilty to charges in connection to the accident, and court records show the charges were dropped after his death.

People were sending Paul messages about the crash, Buster said, and “a lot of times he’d be walking down the sidewalk and, you know, a car comes by and they would yell some stuff at him.”

“I knew he would go out at a bar and there’s somebody that wants to talk about it, make a scuff about it,” Buster said.

The accident and the ensuing backlash from the community “kind of consumed” his mother, Buster said.

“She (was) big on reading all of it. And when she read the negative stuff, you know, (it) made her feel upset and whatnot, and it ultimately kind of caused her to distance herself from Hampton,” where the family had long lived, he said. Maggie felt people in town were “staring at her and talking about her,” Buster said, and she stopped going to the grocery stores and pharmacy there.

Alex Murdaugh was sued by Beach’s family after the boat crash, and prosecutors have pointed to the civil case as a potential catalyst for the killings: Witnesses who testified for the state described a hearing in that case, set to take place three days after the murders, that could have revealed the state of Murdaugh’s finances and his alleged misdeeds. The hearing was canceled after the murders.

But Alex Murdaugh never appeared “overly anxious” about the civil case, Buster said Tuesday.

To the family, the criminal case against Paul was the priority, he said, because “none of us thought that he was driving the boat” at the time of the accident.

Coroner testifies on time of death

Murdaugh has maintained that he was not home when the killings took place, telling investigators he had gone to visit his mother in Almeda that night.

Upon returning home to the family’s sprawling estate, he told investigators, he found the bodies of his wife and son on the ground by their dog kennels and called 911.

Colleton County Coroner Richard Harvey, the defense’s first witness on Friday, said he estimated Paul and Maggie’s times of death to be around 9 p.m. on June 7, 2021, based on body temperature checks.

When asked by the defense whether the pair could have been shot any time between 8 p.m. or 10 p.m., Harvey said yes.

Colleton County Coroner Richard Harvey testifies during the trial on Friday. - Joshua Boucher/AP

Prosecutors, however, have used a piece of video evidence to argue that Murdaugh was at the crime scene shortly before 9 p.m. – which they say would contradict Murdaugh’s assertion to investigators that he had not been to the kennels that night before finding the bodies.

An almost minute-long video filmed on Paul’s phone beginning at 8:44 p.m. shows one of the family dogs and appears to have been taken at the kennels, Lt. David Britton Dove, a supervisor in the computer crimes center at the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, testified.

Three different voices can be heard, Dove testified. During the trial, family friends testified the voices belong to Paul, Maggie and Alex Murdaugh.

In his opening statement, defense attorney Dick Harpootlian said the audio showed Murdaugh and his wife having a “normal discussion” with “no animosity.” Paul is “very happy,” Harpootlian claimed. “Nobody’s down there threatening him. Daddy is not pulling out a shotgun and killing him.”

CNN’s Eric Levenson, Amir Vera, Alta Spells, Dianne Gallagher, Christina Maxouris, Dakin Andone, and Angela Barajas contributed to this report.

For more CNN news and newsletters create an account at CNN.com