Alex Murdaugh trial: Detective explains key crime scene mystery after killer begins appeal

Throughout the six-week trial, viewers of Alex Murdaugh’s double murder trial were often captivated by the so-called “man in the yellow suit”.

Chatter on social media repeatedly turned to Dr Wendell Butterfield, an 80-year-old man tasked with the security of Judge Clifton Newman who often sported eccentric, colourful outfits as he sat in the courtroom in Colleton County Courthouse.

Mandy Matney, a local journalist and podcast host who has followed the Murdaugh case for years, pointed out Dr Butterfield’s dashing yellow suit back on 2 March.

“CHECK OUT THAT YELLOW SUIT,” she tweeted.

Several other social media users commented on the outfit with one saying it “brought the sunshine today” as Murdaugh’s guilty verdict came hours later.

Dr Butterfield told The Daily Beast he was surprised to learn his outfit choices had made him the talk of the trial.

“I had no idea that my suit choices were making quite a stir,” he said. “It’s been surreal.”

Since birth, he enjoyed the privileges that came from being the heir to a local legal dynasty.

For a decade he got away with stealing millions of dollars from his law firm, legal clients and friends.

And for 13 months he evaded justice after murdering his wife and adult son in a brutal fashion on the family’s estate.

But, in the end, Alex Murdaugh’s crimes caught up with him.

And it was his own son who unknowingly helped cement his downfall from beyond the grave with a damning 50-second cellphone video of a dog.

The Independent’s Rachel Sharp reports:

The Murdaugh family’s Moselle estate had a mysterious past even before Maggie and Paul’s murders.

There was ties to a suspected drug smuggler.

And a housekeeper’s fatal fall.

Read more here:

Paul Murdaugh, 22, was the younger son of Alex and Maggie Murdaugh who, at the time of his death, was facing trial over the death of Mallory Beach, 19.

On the night of 24 February 2019, Paul was allegedly drunk driving the Murdaugh family’s boat with several of his friends on board.

The boat crashed into some rocks and threw the passengers overboard.

Beach’s body washed up on shore around a week later.

Paul Murdaugh pictured in mugshot for the boat crash

In April 2019, Paul was charged with three felonies over Beach’s death including boating under the influence and was facing up to 25 years in prison.

Paul was shot twice with a shotgun – once in the chest and once in the shoulder.

Investigators in the boat crash case had no choice but to drop the charges when he died. Beach’s family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the Murdaughs – which was finally settled in January 2023.

Murder. A botched hitman plot. Mystery deaths. Millions of dollars of stolen money. Opioid addiction.

The case involving Alex Murdaugh appears to have it all when it comes to drama and plot twists.

It’s then little surprise that his murder trial in Walterboro, South Carolina, captivated the public all across America in the weeks before the jury convicted him.

But it should then also come as little surprise that the high-profile case spilled out into a spectacle far beyond the testimony jurors heard in the courtroom.

During a dramatic six weeks in court, the trial was been rocked by a bomb threat, apparently obscene gestures and bad behaviour from the Murdaugh family members, a controversial GoFundMe account, a Covid-19 outbreak among jurors – and a dozen eggs.

Here’s how Murdaugh’s murder trial descended into a circus:

Maggie was Alex Murdaugh’s wife and the mother of their two sons Buster and Paul.

The 52-year-old met her husband when they were both students at the University of South Carolina.

She was shot five times with an AR-15-style rifle on the night of 7 June 2021.

According to testimony from the Murdaugh housekeeper Blanca Simpson, Maggie was concerned with the family’s finances – and feared her husband was not being truthful with her about the extent of their situation.

Ms Simpson testified that Maggie had got upset and confided in her a few months before the murders, saying that the family was being sued for $30m in the boat crash lawsuit.

Maggie told her that she felt “Alex was not being truthful to her about the lawsuit... she said ‘he doesn’t tell me everything’,” testified Ms Simpson.

Maggie’s sister Marian Proctor testified that Murdaugh had an affair about 15 years ago – and Maggie found out about it.

While it was years ago and the couple worked through it, she said it “bothered” Maggie and she had brought it up again around the time of the murders.

She also revealed that the family knew about Murdaugh’s opioid abuse.

“When Paul and Maggie Murdaugh were gunned down at their family’s hunting estate in the summer of 2021, few people outside of their South Carolina community had heard their names before. Nationally, it was a shocking double murder of a mother and adult son who hailed from a wealthy family. But beyond that, the Murdaugh name held no significance.

“In fact, the name itself sparked much discussion as true crime enthusiasts, curious members of the public and journalists new to the family’s cases — myself included — toyed with the pronunciation. Is it Mur-doe? Or Mur-daw? I think it could be Mur-dock? Is the father and husband Alec or Alex? (It’s pronounced Alec Murdock for anyone still unsure.)

“But, as I began digging into the case in the days after the murders, it quickly became clear how much weight the name held in the local community.”

The Independent’s Rachel Sharp writes:

The jury spent less than three hours deliberating before returning a unanimous guilty verdict – a timeframe that has led to speculation from some on social media that the panel didn’t spend enough time looking at the evidence.

Prominent criminal defence attorney Duncan Levin told The Independent this week that he was surprised it took jurors as long as it did to convict him.

“I’m surprised it took three hours. I actually predicted one hour,” said Mr Levin.

“There’s no magic amount of time,” he said, defending how long the jurors took.

“The jurors paid close attention to the trial over the many weeks. They didn’t just have a few hours to consider the evidence – they’ve actually been thinking about it and deliberating and considering it for weeks and weeks.”

Powerful South Carolina legal scion Alex Murdaugh became the centre of the ‘trial of the century’ over the brutal double murder of his wife and son.

But this is far from the only twist in a bizarre and sprawling tale of unexplained deaths, hitman plots and multi-million-dollar fraud schemes.

The Independent’s Rachel Sharp writes: