Alex Murdaugh sobs and whimpers as he describes finding bodies of wife Maggie and son Paul: ‘It was so bad’

Mr Murdaugh’s testimony comes as the defence plans to wrap up its case on Friday – a case that seeks to present the alleged killer and financial fraudster as a loving family man

Alex Murdaugh broke down in tears on the witness stand as he described the moment that he claims he discovered the bloodied bodies of his wife Maggie and son Paul by the kennels of the family’s estate.

The disgraced heir to a powerful legal dynasty took the witness stand in Colleton County Courthouse in Walterboro, South Carolina, on Thursday morning as his defence nears the end of its case in his high-profile double murder trial.

In dramatic testimony, the accused killer sobbed as he faced the jury and repeated the same phrase he was heard making on the night of the 7 June 2021 to describe the scene of the murders: “It was so bad.”

“My boy was lying face down... I could see his brain laying on the sidewalk. I didn’t know what to do,” he said.

During questioning from his defence attorneys, Mr Murdaugh continued to insist that he is innocent of the accusations – that he shot Paul twice with a shotgun and then gunned down his wife multiple times with an AR-15-style rifle.

Alex Murdaugh stands next to the witness booth during a break in his trial for murder at the Colleton County Courthouse on Thursday, Feb. 23, 2023 in Walterboro, South Carolina (AP)

Instead, Mr Murdaugh continued to claim that he drove down to the kennels of the sprawling family estate after returning from visiting his ailing mother and saw the two victims lying on the ground as he pulled up.

Choking with emotion, he testified how he had touched both of the victims, how Paul’s cellphone “popped out” of his pocket, described seeing his son’s brain shot out of his head – and said that to some extent he is “not sure exactly what I did”.

“I jumped out of my car... I’m not sure exactly what I did,” he said on arrival at the kennels.

He said he went back to the car and called 911, and was on the phone to the dispatcher while touching both his wife and son’s bodies.

“I was trying to tend to Paul. I was trying to tend to Maggie,” he said. “I was going between them.”

When asked about Paul’s bodies, he kept repeating “so bad” and wept.

“I know I tried to check him for a pulse. I know I tried to turn him over,” he said.

When asked why he tried to turn Paul over, Mr Murdaugh said: “I don’t know. I don’t know why I tried to turn him over.

Alex Murdaugh cries on the witness stand (Colleton County Court)

“I tried to turn him over, grabbed him by the belt loop and tried to turn him over,” he said.

Mr Murdaugh volunteered the information that, as he tried to move Paul, his son’s phone “popped out” of his pocket.

“And when I did, his phone popped out,” he said.

“And when it did I picked it up and put it back down.”

Jurors have previously heard testimony from multiple law enforcement officers on the scene that – despite his claims that he touched the victims’ bodies – Mr Murdaugh did not appear to have any blood on his hands or clothing.

Bodycam footage from the first officer on the scene also shows him dressed in a clean white T-shirt - which did not test positive for any blood.

As jurors have previously heard, the crime scene was especially violent and bloody, with Paul’s brain shot out of his skull and both he and Maggie lying in pools of their own blood, fuelling the prosecution’s theory that Mr Murdaugh killed his wife and son and then changed his clothing – disposing of the bloody clothes.

Mr Murdaugh testified that he did get blood on his hands “probably” from both Maggie and Paul after touching their bodies.

“I know I got blood on my fingertips,” he said, adding “there was so much blood”.

He said he assumed that a drop of blood on the steering wheel of his car and blood on the shotgun he had at the scene must be from him after touching the bodies.

The 911 call, Mr Murdaugh made at 10.06pm that night, was also played in court revealing him saying “he should have known”.

Mr Murdaugh claimed he was talking about the threats to Paul over the 2019 boat crash.

After finding the bodies and calling 911, he said he drove back to the house and got a gun, fearing that the killer or killers was still out there.

In an effort to suggest that he was not thinking rationally because of the trauma, he said he just grabbed ammo and loaded it – not realising he was loading a 16-gauge shell into a 12-gauge shotgun, something he claimed that as a longtime hunter he wouldn’t have done.

He also pushed back on the data which indicates he opened text messages, googled a restaurant and searched for a wedding photographer while waiting for police to arrive.

“I’m not trying to call people. I’m not doing a Google search of a restaurant and I’m certainly not reading any texts,” he said, suggesting he fumbled onto the pages when he was calling his brothers to tell them about the murders.

Mr Murdaugh is accused of gunning down his loved ones in a horrific fashion on the grounds of the family’s 1,700-acre estate in Islandton, South Carolina, on 7 June 2021. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

While he was defiant over his innocence in the murders, in a dramatic moment he did confess that he had lied about not being at the dog kennels with Maggie and Paul that night.

He blamed his opioids addiction and his distrust of SLED for giving him “paranoid thoughts” and leading him to lie to law enforcement agents, family members and friends on multiple occasions.

Crime scene photos show blood on the floor of the dog feed house (Law & Crime)

“On June 7, I wasn’t thinking clearly. I don’t think I was capable of reason. And I lied about being down there. And I’m so sorry that I did,” he said, his eyes brimming up with tears.

“And I’m so sorry that I did.”

Mr Murdaugh said that once he started lying, he couldn’t get out of it.

“Oh what a tangled web we weave. Once I told the lie, and I told my family, I had to keep lying,” he testified.

This is the first time that Mr Murdaugh has ever confessed publicly or to law enforcement that he had lied.

This confession comes after jurors have seen a damning cellphone video which places him at the scene of the murders.

The video, captured by Paul at 8.44pm on 7 June 2021, reveals three voices at the dog kennels on the family estate.

Multiple witnesses – including family friends and law firm partners – have testified that they are “100 per cent sure” that the three voices belong to Maggie, Paul – and Mr Murdaugh.

Minutes later, at around 8.50pm, prosecutors say Maggie and Paul were shot dead.

Mr Murdaugh has long claimed he never went to the kennels that night. He claimed he was asleep at the house at the time of the murders and woke up and went to visit his mother. When he returned, he found his wife and son weren’t home and drove to the kennels.

The decision for Mr Murdaugh to testify comes as the defence plans to wrap up its case on Friday – a case that seeks to present the alleged killer and financial fraudster as a loving family man who would never have murdered his wife and son.

On Thursday morning, he confirmed that he had made his decision.

“I am going to testify. I want to testify,” he defiantly told Judge Clifton Newman.

So far, jurors have heard from 11 defence witnesses including experts who testified about mistakes in the preservation of crime scene evidence, a ballistics expert who claimed Maggie’s shooter was 5’2” tall and not the 6’4” Mr Murdaugh, and the accused killer’s surviving son Buster.

This comes after jurors have heard four weeks of dramatic testimony from the prosecution, presenting Mr Murdaugh as a serial liar who stole millions from his own law firm and friends, and orchestrated situations to paint himself as a victim when his alleged crimes were on the brink of exposure.

In total, 61 prosecution witnesses covered a trove of circumstantial evidence, including cellphone and car data, a damning video allegedly placing Mr Murdaugh at the crime scene and apparent holes in his alibi for the time for the murders.

The decision to put Mr Murdaugh on the stand came down to the wire, with his defence attorneys paying him a jailhouse visit on Wednesday night.

Attorneys Dick Harpootlian and Jim Griffin had previously said that their client wanted to testify in his own defence but were dealt a – not entirely unexpected – blow when the judge refused to limit the scope of his cross-examination.

On Wednesday morning, Mr Griffin asked Judge Clifton Newman to bring an order preventing the prosecution from cross-examining Mr Murdaugh about his string of alleged financial crimes should he take the stand.

Mr Griffin said the legal team had not yet decided whether or not Mr Murdaugh would testify in his murder trial but that they wanted the financial crimes to be off-limits if he did.

Prosecutor Creighton Waters argued that the cross-examination is “wide open” to all the alleged crimes – including the financial crimes – if Mr Murdaugh takes the stand. Judge Newman sided with the state, refusing to issue an order ahead of the testimony.

“For the court to issue a blanket order limiting the scope of cross-examination, that’s unheard of to me,” he said.

Mr Murdaugh is likely to face a tough cross-examination as he will be grilled about several discrepancies in his alibi.

Prosecutors allege that Mr Murdaugh killed his wife and son to distract from his string of alleged financial crimes – at a time when his multi-million-dollar fraud scheme was on the brink of being exposed.

At the time of the murders, Mr Murdaugh was being sued by the family of Mallory Beach – a 19-year-old woman who died in a 2019 crash in the Murdaugh family boat.

Diagram shows where Maggie and Paul’s bodies were found at the dog kennels (Law & Crime)

Paul was allegedly drunk driving the boat at the time and crashed it, throwing Beach overboard. Her body washed ashore a week later. Paul was charged with multiple felonies over the boat wreck and was facing 25 years in prison at the time of his murder.

The Beach family sued Mr Murdaugh and a lawsuit hearing was scheduled for the week of the murders.

Their attorney had also filed a motion to compel, which prosecutors say would have exposed Mr Murdaugh’s ruinous finances.

The 10 June hearing was then postponed following Maggie and Paul’s murders.

Prosecutors claim that Mr Murdaugh’s multi-million-dollar fraud scheme was also on the brink of exposure, with his law firm PMPED closing in on his alleged theft.

That very morning, the CFO had confronted him about $792,000 worth of missing payments.

Mr Murdaugh had allegedly stolen the money and could not pay it back.

Jurors have heard testimony from several law firm partners and clients about how Mr Murdaugh stole millions over a decade-long fraud scheme.

In a blow to the defence – and a bonus to the prosecution’s case presenting Mr Murdaugh as a master manipulator – jurors also heard about the bizarre botched hitman plot.

On 3 September 2021, Mr Murdaugh’s law firm partners confronted him that they had uncovered his sprawling theft from the company. He was forced to resign.

Then, three months on from the murders on 4 September 2021, Mr Murdaugh was suddenly shot in the head along the side of a road in Hampton County.

APTOPIX Murdaugh Killings (Jeff Blake)

He survived and called 911, claiming he was ambushed in a drive-by shooting while he was changing a tire on his vehicle.

But, Mr Murdaugh’s story about the incident quickly unravelled.

One week later on 13 September, he confessed to law enforcement that he had orchestrated the whole saga, paying an alleged hitman to shoot and kill him in an assisted suicide plot so that his surviving son Buster could get a $10m life insurance windfall.

He told investigators that he had paid Curtis “Eddie” Smith – a former law firm client, distant cousin and allegedly his drug dealer – to carry out the shooting. Both he and Mr Smith were arrested and charged over the incident.

The plot, described as the “side of the road” incident, marked one of the most bizarre twists in the sprawling scandal which has enveloped the disgraced heir to a prominent South Carolina legal dynasty over the past 20 months.

Prosecutors say this fits the pattern of Mr Murdaugh orchestrating a crime to make himself a victim – and to get out of being held accountable for his actions.

The brutal double murders brought to light a series of scandals surrounding Mr Murdaugh including unexplained deaths, the multi-million-dollar fraud scheme and the botched hitman plot.

Days on from the shootings, an investigtion was then reopened into the 2015 death of Stephen Smith, who was found dead in the middle of the road in Hampton County.

The openly gay teenager, 19, 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 also reopened into another mystery death connected to the Murdaugh family – that of the Murdaugh’s longtime housekeeper Gloria Satterfield.

She died in 2018 in a mystery trip and fall accident at the family home. Mr Murdaugh then allegedly stole around $4m in a wrongful death settlement from her sons.

The 54-year-old is facing life in prison on the murder charges.