Infamous ‘egg juror’ in Alex Murdaugh’s murder trial asks to be left alone
Female juror hit headlines when she was dismissed from the panel just hours before deliberations began and the jury reached a unanimous verdict of guilty in the high-profile trial
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The juror who earned the infamous nickname of the “egg juror” in Alex Murdaugh’s double murder trial has asked to be left alone.
The woman, identified as juror 785 in South Carolina’s so-called “trial of the century”, said that it is “not her desire” to speak publicly about the case and is requesting that the public and the media refrain from trying to contact her.
“While other jurors have chosen to comment, which is their prerogative, that is not her desire at this time,” her attorney Joe McCulloch said in a statement.
“Given her public service for the weeks of trial, she earned through her public service the right to have her wishes respected. She wishes you to know that she took the juror oath and all of the subsequent court’s instructions seriously and believes she followed them appropriately.”
The statement added that the juror “now wishes freedom from contact and harassment” and asked that efforts to contact her at home and at her place of work “come to an end”.
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Her attorney said he has also notified and requested the assistance of the Colleton County Sheriff’s Department over the matter.
The female juror hit headlines when she was dismissed from the panel last Thursday – just hours before deliberations began and the jury reached a unanimous verdict of guilty in the high-profile trial.
Moments before the defence delivered its closing argument – and after the juror had sat through six weeks of trial testimony – Judge Clifton Newman announced that she was being removed from the panel for discussing the case with at least three other people. She had also given her opinion about the evidence she had seen in the case.
After telling the defence and prosecution his decision in the courtroom, Judge Newman brought the juror in and told her she was being removed.
The woman then prompted some light-hearted relief in the courtroom when she was asked if she had left anything behind in the jury room.
“A dozen eggs,” she replied.
This sparked laughter from Judge Newman, the defence and the prosecution – and even Murdaugh – as court staff were instructed to go and collect her eggs from the jury room to return to her.
She was replaced by an alternate.
Ultimately, the final 12 spent less than three hours deliberating before convicting Murdaugh of the brutal murders of his wife Maggie and son Paul on the family’s Moselle property back on 7 June 2021.
Murdaugh, 54, was then sentenced by Judge Newman to life in prison the following day – and is currently behind bars in South Carolina.
After the verdict was handed down, a source told FITS News that the removal of the so-called “egg juror” could have changed the course of the disgraced attorney’s fate.
The juror had already indicated that she would have found Murdaugh not guilty – and that she could not be swayed in her decision, the source said.
“She was dug in. She said he was ‘not guilty’ and there was nothing anyone could do to change her mind,” they said.
Another added that she would have “hung the jury”.
Four jurors have now spoken out since the verdict, revealing that a damning cellphone video which placed Murdaugh at the scene of the murders was key to his conviction.
The video, taken by Paul on his cellphone at 8.44pm, filmed a dog inside the kennels on the grounds of the Moselle estate.
Off-camera, three voices are heard: Paul, Maggie and Alex Murdaugh.
During dramatic testimony, multiple witnesses identified Murdaugh’s voice in the footage.
Minutes later – at around 8.50pm – Maggie and Paul were brutally gunned down.
The bombshell video not only placed Murdaugh at the scene – but also exposed his lies about his alibi that night.
Since the 7 June 2021 murders, he had claimed that he had never gone to the dog kennels with his wife and son that night.
He claimed that he had stayed at the family home, napped on the couch and then driven to visit his mother at his parents’ home in Almeda.
When he drove home, he claimed he went down to the kennels, placing a dramatic 911 call claiming to have discovered the bodies of the two victims.
In a dramatic two days in the courtroom, Murdaugh finally confessed on the witness stand that he had spent the last 20 months lying about his alibi that night – but he continued to plead his innocence in Maggie and Paul’s murders.
Prosecutors said that Murdaugh killed his wife and son to distract from his string of financial crimes – at a time when his multi-million-dollar fraud scheme was on the brink of being exposed.
Murdaugh’s conviction marks the latest twist in the saga of the man who was once the powerful heir to a South Carolina legal dynasty.
His family had reigned over the local justice system for almost a century, with three generations of the family all serving as the solicitor in the 14th Judicial Circuit solicitor’s office.
The murders of Maggie and Paul shocked the Hampton County community but also brought to light a series of scandals surrounding Murdaugh including a multi-million dollar fraud scheme, a botched hitman plot and a series of other unexplained deaths.