5 key takeaways from Murdaugh trial: Wavering alibi, lack of physical evidence, cellphone video

Alex Murdaugh’s double-murder trial wrapped up for the second week Friday in Walterboro with testimony about missing cellphone data, evidence at the crime scene and Murdaugh’s mounting financial problems.

The end of the week was dominated by hearings — most without the jury present — to decide whether Murdaugh’s dire financial situation can be used as evidence of a motive driving him to kill his wife and son.

Murdaugh is accused of killing his wife, Maggie, and youngest son, Paul, on the night of June 7, 2021, at their rural estate known as Moselle.

Here are five key takeaways from Week 2 of the trial:

Family friends poke holes in Murdaugh’s alibi

Since the night of the murders, Alex Murdaugh has insisted the last time he saw his wife and son, Maggie and Paul Murdaugh, was at dinner that night. He maintained he never visited the kennels before leaving Moselle that night to visit his mother around 9 p.m.

However, two of Paul Murdaugh’s longtime friends identified Alex Murdaugh’s voice on a video Paul took at the Moselle kennels around 8:45 p.m. the evening he was killed.

One of those witnesses, Rogan Gibson, testified he’d known the Murdaugh family for over 10 years, and considered them to be a second family.

When prosecutors played a video that Paul Murdaugh took of Gibson’s dog — which was staying in the Moselle kennels — around 8:40 that night, three voices were heard. Besides Paul, Gibson said he recognized Maggie and Alex Murdaugh speaking in the background.

Gibson confirmed he was “100%” certain the voice was Alex Murdaugh. Murdaugh was also present in an earlier interview with investigators, where Gibson said he was “99%” certain the voice was Murdaugh’s.

“When you said that, did he (Alex Murdaugh) jump up and say, ‘No, I wasn’t there!’” prosecutor Creighton Waters questioned.

“He did not,” Gibson confirmed.

Another friend of Paul Murdaugh, Will Loving, testified after Gibson and also identified Alex Murdaugh’s voice in the video clip.

Murdaugh’s phone has missing calls

In the trial’s opening moments, lead prosecutor Waters suggested Murdaugh made phone calls to his wife after knowing she was dead to “manufacture” an alibi.

While all of those calls were recorded in Maggie Murdaugh’s phone, detectives discovered some call data from the day of the murders was missing from Alex’s cellphone.

Dylan Hightower, an investigator with the 14th Circuit Solicitor’s Office, said the phone records investigators received from Verizon’s network data did not match the call logs on Alex Murdaugh’s phone.

“During that time frame I compared the call logs from the extraction, or from the actual device, to the call logs that I saw on the call detail records from Verizon,” Hightower said. “On the data in question, on June 7, I only saw two FaceTime calls on the phone extraction, and I saw a series of around 73 phone calls on the Verizon record.”

Users cannot delete data from the Verizon records, Hightower confirmed to prosecutor Joseph Conrad, but the discrepancy could be explained by a user manually deleting calls from their phone’s call log.

The call records could also have “overlapped,” meaning older data was deleted to free space on the device, Hightower said.

No blood found at Moselle home

The state repeatedly questioned why Alex Murdaugh’s hands and clothes were “clean,” according to several SLED investigators, despite Murdaugh claiming he tried to flip Paul Murdaugh’s body over.

Prosecutors suggested the gory nature of his son’s death would make it nearly impossible for Alex Murdaugh to adjust the corpse without getting blood or tissue on his hands or his clothes. They’ve alleged he must have washed blood off himself after allegedly committing the murders.

But SLED investigator Katie McCallister, an agent who searched Moselle’s bathrooms a day after the murders on June 8, 2021, said she never identified any blood in the sinks or bathtubs.

“You were the only one to (check the drains), correct?” defense attorney DickHarpootlian asked.

“Yes,” McCallister answered.

“You’re telling this jury you saw no evidence of blood, tissue or anything that would indicate that somebody had showered, or washed off, or bathed to remove evidence of a crime, is that what you’re telling us?” Harpootlian asked.

“Yes sir,” McCallister confirmed. “There was nothing visible to me.”

SLED: ‘No idea’ whether evidence destroyed at crime scene

Harpootlian has lambasted SLED investigators on the stand since the trial’s first week regarding missteps in documenting the murder scene.

He was especially critical of investigators for not recognizing patterns on the floor of the kennels where Maggie and Paul Murdaugh were killed as footwear impressions during their initial search.

“If I’d realized that was footwear (impressions) on the scene, I would’ve documented it properly,” SLED footwear and tire track expert Melinda Worley testified.

Another muddy impression was left on the back of Maggie Murdaugh’s calf. Worley was unsure whether it was a footprint, but confirmed it was not “naturally occurring.”

One bloody footprint captured in a crime scene photo did not belong to either victim, Worley said, and was left by a first responder walking through the scene. The only other impressions identified belonged to Paul and Maggie Murdaugh.

“Do you know what other evidence they (officers) may have destroyed?” Harpootlian asked.

“I have no idea,” Worley said.

“That’s right, you don’t,” Harpootlian emphasized.

Admitting financial evidence undecided

The prosecution called six witnesses with knowledge of Alex Murdaugh’s alleged financial crimes to the stand from Thursday afternoon and Friday morning, presenting their testimony as Judge Clifton Newman decides whether the evidence is admissible.

The jury was absent during that time, but the motions hearings featured heart-wrenching testimony from Chris Wilson, who once considered Alex Murdaugh his “best friend,” and revealing statements from Parker Law Group CFO Jeannie Seckinger and Palmetto Bank CEO Jan Malinowski.

Malinowski and Seckinger painted a vivid picture of Murdaugh’s impending financial ruin. Murdaugh was $4.2 million in debt to Palmetto State Bank by August 2021, Malinowski said, and bank employees had grown suspicious of certain transactions.

Seckinger, the financial head of Murdaugh’s former law group, PMPED, said she confronted Murdaugh the day of the murders about $792,000 in missing fees owed to the firm from one of Murdaugh’s recent cases. Murdaugh repeatedly assured her the money had been sent to Wilson, who helped Murdaugh try the personal injury case that resulted in a settlement.

But Wilson testified he wasn’t aware Murdaugh had invoked his name in the alleged deception until a tell-all conversation he and Murdaugh had in September 2021, where, Wilson testified, Murdaugh admitted to stealing from his own clients and to a long history of drug abuse.

The defense insists a dire financial situation wouldn’t be enough to drive Alex Murdaugh to kill his wife and son, while prosecutors have pointed to Murdaugh’s finances as the strongest potential motive.

Newman will likely make a ruling Monday following testimony from Mark Tinsley, who represented the family of Mallory Beach, the young woman who died in Paul Murdaugh’s 2019 boating accident.

This story was originally published February 4, 2023 at 5:00 AM with the headline "5 key takeaways from Murdaugh trial: Wavering alibi, lack of physical evidence, cellphone video."

Blake Douglas

The Island Packet

Blake is the Hilton Head Island reporter for the Island Packet. A Tulsa, Oklahoma native, Blake has written for his hometown Tulsa World, as well as the Charlotte Observer. He graduated in May 2022 from the University of Oklahoma with a journalism degree.