Alex Murdaugh murder trial: Jury visits crime scene before closing arguments

A double murder trial that has gripped the US has reached its final arguments after more than six weeks of deliberating and evidence from 75 witnesses.

The case centres around 54-year-old Alex Murdaugh, a prominent lawyer, who is charged with murdering his wife, 52, and his 22-year-old son at their family home.

Jurors on Wednesday visited the South Carolina estate where prosecutors allege Murdaugh shot and killed his two family members.

Vans with tinted windows drove the jury around 30 minutes from the courthouse in Walterboro to the home, called Moselle, in the swamps of Colleton County.

The judge allowed them to see the area surrounding dog kennels where the killings happened, as well as the outside of the family's home. The visit lasted for over an hour and jurors also appeared to examine the woods across the street from the property.

Investigators said Murdaugh's son Paul was shot twice with a gun and his wife, Maggie, was shot four or five times with a rifle outside kennels at the home on June 7, 2021.

The key piece of evidence connecting Murdaugh to the killings is a video his son Paul took from the kennels, about five minutes before he last used his mobile phone.

While the murder weapons have not been found, an expert testified the markings on the bullet casings found near Maggie's body matched those found on casings at a shooting range on the family's property.

There was no blood spatter or DNA linking the killings to Murdaugh or anyone else.

Prosecutors have never said how they think Murdaugh could have killed his family, cleaned himself up, disposed of the clothes and weapons, and composed himself in the 15-minute window before GPS data shows he left the property to visit his ailing mother.

The prosecution's star crime scene expert said there isn't enough evidence to definitely say whether there were one or two shooters at the kennels.

It is also alleged Murdaugh stole millions of dollars from the legal firm where he was a partner and he has been charged with 99 financial crimes.

This inclues trying to get a man to fatally shoot him, so his surviving son could collect a $10 million (around £8,315,700) life insurance policy.

He was being held in jail without bail on those counts before he was charged with murder.

'I didn't shoot my wife or my son any time'

The prosecution in the double murder trial thinks there is enough evidence to link the fatal shootings to the financial crimes and to Murdaugh being the only person with the means and opportunity to kill his wife and son.

“As all of these pressures were mounting, the defendant killed Maggie and Paul,' Prosecutor Creighton Waters claimed, pulling out his phone and waving it.

”The forensic timeline puts him there. The use of the family weapons collaborates it. And his lies and his guilty actions afterward confirm that," he added

Mr Waters said Alex Murdaugh has been lying for years to cover up his "opioid addiction" and theft of money from his law firm and clients, so it would be easy to lie about being at the kennels and killing his family, and to lie while testifying in his own defence last week.

“Always having to stay one step ahead of the game. Always have to literally beg, borrow and steal for over a decade to have the truth from being exposed,” Mr Waters said.

The defence has said state agents conducted a poor investigation that focused too quickly on Murdaugh and missed evidence such as fingerprints and shoe prints that could have led to the real killers.

Once closing arguments are finished, the jurors will get their instructions and begin deliberating what they learned during a trial that has included more than 75 witnesses and lasted more than six weeks.

They will be able to review about 800 documents, photographs, videos of police interviews of Murdaugh and other exhibits while deciding on a verdict.

Before the murder trial began the Murdaugh family had been embroiled in two unusual deaths.

One of which, a 2019 boat crash involving Murdaugh’s son Paul, resulted in the death of 19-year-old Mallory Beach.

Paul Murdaugh was indicted for being drunk while helming the boat (Boating under the influence) and causing the death of Mallory Beach. He pleaded not guilty.

But before the trial could go ahead Paul and his mother Maggie were both shot dead near the family home.

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