Alex Murdaugh’s final text to wife Maggie after murder revealed
Cellphone evidence is expected to be key to the state’s case
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Cellphone data has revealed Alex Murdaugh called and texted his wife’s phone in the minutes after she was brutally shot dead – while ammunition matching that used to kill her and their son was located on the family’s property.
The trial of the heir to a powerful legal empire continued in Colleton County Courthouse in Walterboro, South Carolina, on Tuesday, with cyber experts and a Verizon employee delving into the final communications made on Maggie and Paul’s cellphones on the night they were killed.
Maggie, 52, and Paul, 22, were shot dead at the dog kennels on the family’s sprawling 1,700-acre estate in Islandton on 7 June 2021.
Their husband and father Mr Murdaugh is now on trial for their murders.
Prosecutors have previously said that Mr Murdaugh shot Paul dead first at 8.50pm, followed by Maggie.
Almost immediately after, cellphone data shows Mr Murdaugh made several calls to Maggie and other family members.
His chilling final text to his wife at 9.47pm simply read: “Call me babe.”
Prosecutors allege that Mr Murdaugh had already killed his wife and son almost an hour before and was seeking to build an alibi for that night.
The cellphone records for the phones of Paul, Maggie and Mr Murdaugh were revealed in court on Tuesday, as the state seeks to show the final communications made by the victims and their accused killer.
SLED Lt. Britt Dove, who works in the computer crimes centre, testified that he processed the three cellphones.
Based on the cellphone data, he said that the last text Maggie read was a message from her sister-in-law Lynn Murdaugh in a group chat which she read at 8.49pm.
After 8.49pm, she didn’t open or respond to messages or calls from several people including her husband, oldest son Buster and Mr Murdaugh’s brother John Marvin Murdaugh.
Mr Murdaugh first called Maggie at 9.04pm – minutes after he allegedly shot her dead – and the call went to voicemail.
He then texted her phone at 9.08pm, claiming he was going to visit his mother: “Going to check on M. Be right back.” The text was never read.
In total, Mr Murdaugh called his wife five times between 9.04pm and 10.03pm after allegedly killing her.
None of the calls were answered.
Minutes after the final call, Mr Murdaugh called 911 at 10.07pm claiming to have found Maggie and Paul’s bodies.
As well as calling Maggie, Mr Murdaugh’s cellphone records show he also made several calls to other numbers in the hour between the time prosecutors say the murder took place and he called 911.
Jurors also heard how the cellphone data shows Maggie’s phone orientation changed from portrait to landscape at 8.54pm and then again at 9.06pm, indicating that it was in someone’s hands. One minute later, at 9.07pm the screen went on and off as though someone tried – but failed – to unlock it.
Health app data was also presented to jurors, showing that Maggie’s cellphone recorded 59 steps in two minutes after 8.53pm – after prosecutors allege Maggie and Paul were already dead.
“It tells me someone was holding this phone and took steps, and it recorded those steps,” said Lt Dove.
Maggie’s phone was locked between 8.49pm on 7 June 2021 and 1.10pm the following day when it was found dumped by the side of a road around a quarter of a mile from the Murdaugh property.
Paul’s cellphone was also initially locked after the murders, until US Secret Service Digital Forensic Examiner Jonathan VanHouten testified that he managed to unlock when he successfully tried Paul’s birthday as his passcode.
Cellphone evidence is expected to be key to the state’s case, with prosecutors telling jurors in opening statements that the data from the victims phones and a Snapchat video made by Paul minutes before their murders are “critical”.
In court on Tuesday, jurors also learned that ammunition matching the the fatal shot fired through Paul’s brain had been located on the Murdaugh family property.
Two separate guns were used to kill Maggie and Paul. They have never been found.
Paul was shot twice – once in the head and once in the chest – with a shotgun while Maggie was shot five times with a AR-15-style rifle – with some of the bullets striking her when she had already fallen to the ground.
During searches of the Murdaugh property, steel shot ammo – specifically Winchester DryLok – was located, jurors heard.
This was the same type of ammunition – typically used to hunt waterfowl – that Mr Murdaugh’s attorney Jim Griffin told the court “blew Paul’s head off”.
The revelation came during testimony from SLED Special Agent Jeff Croft, who told the court how he had seized ammunition, firearms and shells from the family’s sprawling property.
During direct testimony on Monday, Agent Croft told jurors how he seized firearms and ammunition from the Murdaugh home – including weapons and ammo that matched the type of guns and bullets used to kill Maggie.
Bodycam footage captured a huge stash of firearms inside the family’s home.
A .300 Blackout semiautomatic rifle, 12-gauge Browning shotgun, Benelli shotgun and 12-gauge pump shotgun which were seized from the family home were all brought into the courtroom and shown to jurors.
The agent testified that several empty boxes of ammunition were also found during searches of the Murdaugh home on 8 June and 13 June.
And Sellier & Bellot .300 AAC BLK rifle ammo was also found at the property – the same type of ammunition used to kill Maggie.
Also seized as evidence was a credit card receipt for an $1,021.10 item from Gucci. The item – which was not revealed in court – had been circled by someone, with the bizarre piece of evidence mentioned for a second time by the state on Tuesday.
Mr Murdaugh’s cousin John Bedingfield also testified against him, revealing how the 54-year-old bought several firearms from him in the years prior to the murders – ones that match the type used to kill Maggie.
Mr Bedingfield, who works for the Department of Natural Resources but has a side business making and selling firearms under a federal licence, told the court that Mr Murdaugh approached him before Christmas 2016 wanting to buy both Paul and his surviving son rifles as presents.
He purchased two subsonic 300 BlackOut rifles – one black, one tan colour – for $9,188 so his sons could hunt hogs, he testified.
Two years later in April 2018, he said that Mr Murdaugh bought a third rifle from him for $875 because he said that Paul had lost his other one.
During the initial cross-examination of Agent Croft on Tuesday, Mr Griffin sought to cast doubt on his testimony about the firearms and ammo found on the the family home – as well as a shocking statement made by the suspect in the days after the murders.
Mr Griffin questioned the agent about whether he had found any ammunition on the property that matched the steel shot bullet that killed Paul.
Initially, Agent Croft agreed that he had not.
But, under redirect, prosecutors entered ammunition gathered from the Murdaugh home as evidence.
Agent Croft testified that the ammo was a match for that used to kill Paul, saying that – while he did not personally find the steel shot – there was a team of agents tasked to search the home for evidence.
However, under second cross, he admitted that the ammunition had been found during a search four months on from the murders and that the estate had not been secured during that time.
The agent agreed he could not confirm whether or not the ammo was there on the night of 7 June 2021.
During direct examination on Monday, Agent Croft had testified that he had gone to Mr Murdaugh’s brother’s home three days on from the murders on 10 June 2021 to carry out Mr Murdaugh’s second police interview.
In a bombshell moment, jurors heard audio where the legal scion may have unwittingly slipped up and confessed to the murders of his wife and son.
“I did him so bad,” he appeared to say about his son.
Agent Croft was asked by prosecutor Creighton Waters to clarify what he heard Mr Murdaugh saying. “It’s just so bad. I did him so bad,” he responded.
The audio however raised doubts both in and out of the courtroom, being somewhat unclear as to whether Mr Murdaugh says “I” or “they”.
During cross-examination on Tuesday, Mr Griffin grilled Agent Croft as to why – if Mr Murdaugh’s statement raised alarm bells – he didn’t follow up on it.
The special agent testified that he “made a mental note” about Mr Murdaugh’s comment and said it “was somehing we were definitely going to follow up on”.
However, at that time he said it was early in the investigation when officials were in more of an “information gathering” stage.
The audio was played again in court – twice in real time and once at one-third speed.
When asked by Mr Griffin if he heard “they” not “I” when the recording was slowed down, Agent Croft testified that he still heard “I”.
“I still testify that with my hearing I hear ‘I’,” he said.
Mr Murdaugh, 54, is facing life in prison for the murders of his wife and son.
Prosecutors claim he shot dead his family members in an attempt to distract from a string of other scandals and crimes encircling him. He denies the allegations, insisting that their killer or killers is still at large.
At the time of the murders, Mr Murdaugh was believed to be facing financial ruin from a 20-year opioid addiction and – one day earlier – had been confronted by his law firm PMPED over an alleged multi-million-dollar fraud scheme.
Now, Mr Murdaugh is charged with more than 100 counts from multiple indictments alleging he stole nearly $8.5m from clients at his law firm in fraud schemes going back a decade.
The attorney, who has since been disbarred, allegedly represented the clients in wrongful death settlements before pocketing the money for himself.
Alleged victims include family members of Gloria Satterfield family, the Murdaugh’s longtime housekeeper who died in a mysterious trip and fall accident at the family home in 2018.
At the time, her death was regarded as an accidental fall – though the investigation was reopened after Maggie and Paul’s murders.
Three months on from the murders – on 4 September 2021 – Mr Murdaugh allegedly conspired to pay a hitman to shoot him dead so that Buster would inherit a $10m life insurance windfall.
The now-disbarred attorney initially claimed he was ambushed in a drive-by shooting while changing a tyre on his vehicle, but his story quickly unravelled and he confessed to orchestrating the plot.
Mr Murdaugh and his alleged co-conspirator Curtis Smith were arrested and charged over the incident.
As well as the deaths of Beach and Satterfield, questions have also surfaced about other mystery deaths surrounding the Murdaughs.
Stephen Smith, 19, was found dead in the middle of the road in Hampton County, South Carolina.
The openly gay teenager had suffered blunt force trauma to the head and his death was officially ruled a hit-and-run. But the victim’s family have long doubted this version of events, with the Murdaugh name cropping up in several police tips and community rumours.
An investigation was reopened into his death after Maggie and Paul’s murders.