Alex Murdaugh attorneys claim associate’s ‘failed’ lie detector test exonerates him in wife and son’s murders

The latest headlines from our reporters across the US sent straight to your inbox each weekday

Your briefing on the latest headlines from across the US

Please enter a valid email address

Please enter a valid email address

SIGN UP

I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy

Alex Murdaugh’s attorneys have suggested his wife and son’s murders were committed by a former associate.

Attorneys for the embattled legal scion claimed in a motion filed in Colleton County, South Carolina, that prosecutors have been reticent to turn over evidence that allegedly exonerates Mr Murdaugh from his wife and 22-year-old son’s killings on 7 June 2021, ABC reported.

The prosecution, Mr Murdaugh’s attorneys allege, is withholding results of Eddie Smith’s polygraph test, which allegedly show he failed when answering “No” when asked if he had killed Maggie and Paul Murdaugh and whether he was present at the time of their killings.

“The state is apparently turning a blind eye to the obvious, that the reason Smith failed the polygraph when asked if he murdered Maggie and Paul is because he in fact did commit these heinous crimes,” the attorneys, Dick Harpootlian and Jim Griffin, stated in the motion filed Friday.

Judge Clifton Newman, who has previously denied Mr Murdaugh’s attempt to subpoena prosecutors, has yet to rule on the motion. Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the Attorney General’s Office told WIS-10 that “over three-quarters of a terabyte of information” have been provided to the defence.

Murdaugh’s attorneys went on to claim that the prosecution was not pursuing Mr Smith as a suspect because they planned to use his testimony against Mr Murdaugh in the upcoming murder trial.

Mr Harpootlian and Mr Griffin have asked Judge Newman to order the prosecution to disclose their terms and agreements with Mr Smith.

The defence also alleged that people Mr Smith claimed to be with on the night of the double murder were only interviewed by prosecutors weeks after, allowing Mr Smith time to build an alibi.

Mr Smith is already facing several charges in an investigation into a botched insurance fraud scheme that consisted of Mr Smith allegedly shooting Mr Murdaugh at his own request so his surviving son could claim life insurance, according to CNN.

For the first time, Mr Murdaugh’s attorneys also addressed the evidence that placed him on the crime scene. The defence argued that blood splatter found by investigators on his clothes was “minimal” and was the result of him leaning over his deceased’s wife’s body.

Mr Murdaugh also said he had previously conducted drug exchanges near the dog kennels in the family residence where his son and wife were killed, hinting that they could have accidentally walked into Mr Smith before they were killed, ABC reported.

Mr Murdaugh pled not guilty to double murder charges in July. His trial is set to begin in January 2023.

The defence had previously claimed the prosecution was withholding evidence from the team. The prosecution said that the delay in sharing evidence was actually caused by Mr Murdaugh’s team after they wouldn’t agree to a protection request to prevent autopsy details, crime scene photos and other evidence from being made public before the trial.

At a press conference on 17 August, Mr Harpootlian said that the state attorney general’s office was taking too long to share evidence, claiming that the delay is making it difficult for Mr Murdaugh to defend himself in his upcoming trial.

The South Carolina AG’s office responded to the claims from Mr Murdaugh’s legal team in legal papers, claiming they were staging a “manufactured drama”.

Paul and Maggie’s violent deaths are at the centre of a plethora of criminal troubles for the once-successful South Carolina former attorney, who has had his licence revoked in light of his legal issues.

Prior to his dramatic fall from grace, Mr Murdaugh was a powerful figure in Hampton County.

For almost a century, his family members have reigned over the local justice system with his father, grandfather and great-grandfather all serving as the solicitor in the 14th Judicial Circuit solicitor’s office.

Here’s a recount of ongoing investigations linked to the Murdaughs:

Paul and Maggie Murdaugh’s murders

Mr Murdaugh was charged with two counts of murder and two counts of possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime in July. The charges came a staggering 13 months after his wife and son were found murdered by the dog kennels at the family’s estate.

Prosecutors have so far remained tight-lipped about what evidence finally led them to charge Mr Murdaugh with the double murders.

However, at his indictment on 20 July, prosecutors indicated that the disbarred attorney’s string of white-collar fraud and drugs scandals are all tied to his motive.

Sources close to the investigation said that blood spatter on the 53-year-old’s clothing as well as cellphone footage placed Mr Murdaugh at the scene of at least one of his loved ones’ murders.

The source told FITS News that the high-velocity spatter on his clothing shows he was in close contact with at least one of the victims when they were shot.

At the time of her murder, Maggie was living apart from her husband at the family’s beach house on Edisto Island and had been speaking with divorce attorneys.

The night of her killing, the 52-year-old had texted a friend saying that her husband had asked her to meet him at their estate that night so they could go to visit his dying father together, FITS News reported.

Maggie told her friend she believed Mr Murdaugh was “up to something” and was acting “fishy”. Hours later, she was dead.

Paul Murdaugh was awaiting trial over the death of a friend before his murder

Paul, meanwhile, was awaiting trial on charges over the death of 19-year-old Mallory Beach in a 2019 boat crash. Paul was allegedly drunk driving a boat when he crashed it, throwing Ms Beach to her death.

He was charged with boating under the influence and faced up to 25 years in prison. Rumours instantly swirled that the incident was in some way connected to Paul’s death.

Three months after his wife and son’s deaths, Mr Murdaugh allegedly hired a hitman to fake his own murder.

On 4 September, the attorney called 911 claiming he was ambushed in a drive-by shooting while he was changing a tire on the side of a road in Hampton County. Mr Murdaugh was shot in the head and taken to hospital with superficial injuries.

One day after the shooting, Mr Murdaugh entered rehab for a 20-year opioid addiction and announced he had resigned from his law firm Peters, Murdaugh, Parker, Eltzroth, & Detrick (PMPED).

Days later, his law firm partners accused him of stealing millions of dollars from its clients going back years.

The partners had confronted Mr Murdaugh about the allegations and ousted him from the firm just one day before the shooting.

Mr Murdaugh’s version of events around the shooting rapidly fell apart and he confessed to police to 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.

Both Mr Murdaugh and his alleged accomplice Curtis Smith – who the attorney had previously represented – were charged over the incident.

Mr Murdaugh is accused of swindling $3.4 of his housekeeper’s wrongful death settlement

Following the botched roadside shooting, Mr Murdaugh was released on bond on the promise that he enter rehab for his opioid addiction.

He was then arrested on his release from rehab in October on charges of stealing funds from the wrongful death settlement over the mysterious trip and fall death of the family’s longtime housekeeper Gloria Satterfield in 2018.

Mr Murdaugh is accused of siphoning off $3.4m of the $4m settlement meant for Satterfield’s sons to a fake company called Forge.

Questions have been swirling around Satterfield’s death ever since and investigators reopened a probe into her death. Last month, officials announced plans to exhume her body.

Satterfield worked for the influential Murdaugh family for more than 20 years when she was found at the bottom of some stairs at the family’s home. She died weeks later from her injuries.

At the time, her death was regarded as an accidental fall – though her death certificate cited her manner of death as “natural”.

Mr Murdaugh reached an agreement to pay her family $4m in a wrongful death settlement – money he is now accused of swindling from his insurance company to help fund his drug habit.

An investigation was also reopened into a third mystery death connected to the Murdaugh family

Stephen Smith, 19, was found dead on a road from blunt force trauma to the head in 2015.

His death was officially ruled a hit-and-run but the victim’s family have long doubted this version of events and said that rumours swirled in the community that a “Murdaugh boy” may have been involved.

As well as the murder charges, Mr Murdaugh is already facing more than 80 criminal charges from 16 indictments around the suicide-for-hire plot and schemes to defraud the Satterfield family and other victims out of millions of dollars. He is also facing 11 civil suits.

He has also been disbarred from practising law in South Carolina by the state’s Supreme Court.

“Based on his admitted reprehensible misconduct, we hereby disbar respondent Richard Alexander Murdaugh from the practice of law in South Carolina,” the Supreme Court said on the same day murder charges were announced.

Throughout the legal saga, his surviving son Buster has stood by him.

In prison phone calls leaked last month, Mr Murdaugh is heard laughing to Buster that he has “allegedly done illegal things”.

He is being held on $7m bond at Richland County’s Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center – an amount that the financially-ruined attorney has no way of meeting.