Alex Murdaugh trial hears how killer ambushed Paul before shooting Maggie on her knees
The final terrifying moments of Paul and Maggie Murdaugh’s lives were detailed in court on Thursday as the prosecution prepares to wrap up its case
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Alex Murdaugh allegedly ambushed his son Paul in the feeding room of the family’s dog kennels before turning on his wife Maggie who tried to flee only to be shot and killed on her knees, according to chilling testimony from a top crime scene expert.
Dr Kenny Kinsey, an Orangeburg County sheriff’s deputy and crime scene expert, gave graphic testimony in the Colleton County Courthouse in Walterboro, South Carolina on Thursday, where he walked jurors through each moment of the horrific 7 June 2021 attack.
Expected to be one of the last witnesses for the prosecution, Dr Kinsey went into intricate detail about the victims’ final moments including each of the gunshots they suffered and where the gunman stood while firing each shot.
Paul was shot twice with a shotgun while his mother was shot five times with an AR-15-style rifle. The guns have never been found.
Based on Dr Kinsey’s analysis of the crime scene, jurors heard that Paul was caught off guard in the feeding room of the dog kennels and had no time to defend himself.
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After killing Paul, the gunman then left the feeding room and approached Maggie outside.
In her final moments, she faced her killer and backed away, knocking into the family’s ATV before being gunned down.
She was struck twice before falling to her knees, at which point the killer shot her twice in the head.
Mr Murdaugh is accused of killing 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.
Mr Murdaugh – the once-powerful heir to a South Carolina legal dynasty – has pleaded not guilty and claims the killer or killers are still at large.
During the detailed and harrowing testimony from Dr Kinsey, Mr Murdaugh was seen sobbing and wiping his eyes in the courtroom.
Dr Kinsey said that Paul was standing in the middle of the 10-foot-long feeding room of the dog kennels when the killer fired the first shot.
His arms were not raised indicating that he may have been ambushed by the gunman who was standing outside the room in the doorway looking in.
The first shot, which struck Paul in the chest and arm, was not fatal.
The 22-year-old remained standing for several moments, as seen in the blood droplets that Dr Kinsey said flowed down his arm and dripped off his fingers onto the ground.
He then moved “slowly” towards the door of the feeding room – and toward his killer – leaving a bloody footprint in the ground as he went.
As he reached the door frame, he was shot a second time.
At that point, Dr Kinsey said the shooter was standing to the right of the doorway and fired upward, with the bullet travelling up through Paul’s shoulder and into his brain.
This second shot was fatal – causing Paul to “immediately” fall forward landing outside the feeding room.
“When he received this wound he ceased all movement,” said Dr Kinsey, adding any movement would be “due to gravity”.
Jurors were shown graphic crime scene photos of spatters of Paul’s blood, biological matter and hair on the door of the feeding room.
Biological matter could also have sprayed on the shooter if they were close to the muzzle of the firearm.
The crime scene expert testified that there was no way the gunshot wounds were self-inflicted and no way that the shooter fired them from above. He also said that the shots were not fired at point blank range.
Dr Kinsey went on to testify about the gunshot wounds to Maggie, revealing that the gunman fired multiple shots from an AR-15-style rifle “in very quick succession” as she appeared to be facing the direction of the feeding room.
Based on the angle of the gunshots, the shooter was standing around four or five feet away when he first opened fire.
The first two or three shots – the first striking Maggie’s upper thigh and the second passing through her abdomen and exiting around her kidneys – were not fatal.
Though not fatal, she would have “suffered” and “fell to ground”, Dr Kinsey said.
In a demonstration acted out in the courtroom by prosecutor Creighton Waters, Maggie fell onto her knees with at least one hand on the ground when the gunman then shot “down on her”.
The next shot – through the left side of her abdomen up through her breast, her jaw, and into her brain – was fatal.
The second shot – also to her head and making “one big injury” – would also have been fatal but she was already dead.
Maggie fell face down on the ground, he said, and “there is no evidence that her body was manipulated or moved over”.
When asked if the angle of the gunshots were consistent with the shooter coming from the feeding room after killing Paul, Dr Kinsey said: “It certainly could be.”
Jurors were also shown a photo of an impression on the back of Maggie’s calf – an impression that Mr Murdaugh’s attorneys have brought up at the trial.
Dr Kinsey revealed that he compared the impression to the tire on the ATV under the hanger next to Maggie’s body.
The impression matched the tire and mud from the tire was also found on Maggie’s leg.
“That is a tire tread impression. That is my opinion,” he said.
“It is most likely that tire [on the ATV]. If it is not that tire it is a similar tire with the same specific tread design.”
Dr Kinsey testified that it was consistent with Maggie backing into the tire.
“At some point in time Maggie Murdaugh made contact” with the tire, he said.
“I saw no evidence that she was run over so she had to make contact with it at some point.”
Dr Kinsey testified that there was also no evidence of any struggle between Paul or Maggie and the shooter, and the victims had no defensive wounds.
The crime scene expert also testified about the location of Paul’s cellphone, which was found resting on the right back pocket of his trousers.
Dr Kinsey told jurors that the phone had been “placed there” by someone else.
“In my opinion, his phone was placed there by someone else,” he said.
“After the fatal shot there was no movement… [there’s] no way Paul could have retrieved the phone from his pocket and put on his pants.
“If he had it in his hand it would not have landed there. In my opinion, it would have fallen to the ground... it wouldn’t have fell and landed behind him, up in the air and on him.”
In the 911 call reporting the murders, Mr Murdaugh had told the dispatcher that he moved his son to check for signs of life and his phone had popped out of his pocket. He claimed he picked it up and then put it back down.
During a tense cross-examination, defence attorney Dick Harpootlian questioned the location of the shooter when Paul was shot, pulling out a protractor to make his point that it is an “unusual angle”.
At one point, Dr Kinsey pushed back on his line of questioning saying: “I’ve got a feeling you’re fooling with me, Mr Harpootlian.”
When Mr Harpootlian responded “You got that feeling?”, he replied: “I’ve got that feeling.”
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.
At the time of the murders, Paul was awaiting trial over the death of Mallory Beach – a 19-year-old woman who died in a 2019 crash in the Murdaugh family boat.
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. It was postponed following Maggie and Paul’s murders.
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.
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.
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.
Mr Murdaugh, 54, is facing life in prison for the murders of his wife and son. He has pleaded not guilty.