In Walterboro, Colleton County, South Carolina, where Alex Murdaugh is on trial for the murders of his wife Maggie and son Paul, the seventh day of testimony will begin.
In court on Thursday, Alex Murdaugh's former closest buddy of 40 years sobbed as he recalled the moment he discovered he had stolen millions of dollars from customers of a legal company and $192,000 from himself.
Chris Wilson fought back tears as he remarked, "I don't know how to think any more" about the man he had known for most of his life, adding, "It knocked me down."
"I was furious. "I had been in love with the man for a very long time, and I probably still am, but I was so angry, and I don't remember how it ended," he added. Mr Murdaugh is on trial for the murders of his wife Maggie and son Paul.
He is also charged with over 100 offences for allegedly stealing approximately $8.5 million from customers at his old legal business, PMPED.
Testimony is taking place without the jurors present because the prosecution and defence are disputing the inclusion of evidence of the alleged financial offences. According to the prosecution, the financial crimes were a factor in the deaths of Maggie and Paul.
Alex Murdaugh was seen in a damning Snapchat video donning a completely new set of clothes barely an hour before he is charged with the double homicide of his wife and child.
Jurors at the Colleton County Courthouse in South Carolina were shown a Snapchat video made by Mr Murdaugh's son Paul at 7.56 p.m. on the evening of June 7, 2021, during his high-profile murder trial on Wednesday.
A video of Mr Murdaugh on the grounds of the family estate gazing at a little tree as it limply fell to the ground was transmitted to Paul's buddy Will Loving.
As his father speaks inaudibly, Paul can be heard giggling behind the camera.
In the video, Mr Murdaugh, 54, is shown wearing slacks, loafers, and a blue button-down shirt, which are not the same clothes that were captured on police bodycams after the killings.
Prosecutors questioned Alex Murdaugh's alibi during his dramatic courtroom testimony on Thursday by pointing to a video that seemed to show him at the crime site just before the killings.
A smartphone video made by Paul at the dog kennels where he and Maggie were slain was played for the jury. It included a dog that Paul was caring for at the time for his buddy Rogan Gibson.
Three people may be heard off-camera: Paul, Maggie, and a second male, who the prosecution claims are Mr Murdaugh.
While Paul and Maggie are discussing pets, the male voice can be heard shrieking inaudibly in the distance.
In tense evidence, two Paul friends with strong links to the Murdaugh family assured the jury that they were "100% positive" the voice belonged to Mr Murdaugh.
Less than five minutes before the killings, the footage was captured for 58 seconds between 8.44 and 8.45, according to cellphone data. According to the disbarred lawyer, he was taking a nap at the family's house during that time.
Mr Murdaugh appeared to move his head back and forth and cry throughout the playback of the video in court.
In a South Carolina courtroom, disgraced legal dynasty heir Alex Murdaugh is presently on trial for the killings of his wife and son. On the 7th of June 2021, Mr Murdaugh, 54, is suspected of killing Maggie, 52, five times with a rifle and Paul, 22, twice with a shotgun on the family's sizable hunting lodge near Islandton.
In July 2022, more than a year after their killings, he was taken into custody and accused. Many additional controversies, claims, and alleged crimes have surfaced in the 19 months since the horrible double murders catapulted the Murdaughs into the national spotlight.
Several additional controversies, claims, and alleged crimes have also surfaced in the 19 months since the gruesome double murders catapulted the Murdaughs into national news.
In court on Thursday, Alex Murdaugh's former closest buddy of 40 years sobbed as he recalled the moment he discovered he had stolen millions of dollars from customers of a legal company and $192,000 from himself.
Chris Wilson fought back tears as he remarked, "I don't know how to think any more" about the man he had known for most of his life, adding, "It knocked me down."
"I was furious. "I had been in love with the man for a very long time, and I probably still am, but I was so angry, and I don't remember how it ended," he added. Mr Many Murdaugh is on trial for the murders of his wife Maggie and son Paul.
He is also charged with over 100 offences for allegedly stealing approximately $8.5 million from customers at his old legal business, PMPED.
Testimony is taking place without the jurors present because the prosecution and defence are disputing the inclusion of evidence of the alleged financial offences. According to the prosecution, the financial crimes were a factor in the deaths of Maggie and Paul.
As prosecutors try to persuade the judge to allow testimony about Alex Murdaugh's alleged financial crimes, the former chief financial officer of Murdaugh's law firm testified in his double murder trial on Thursday about confronting the now-disbarred lawyer about missing funds the morning his wife and son were killed.
Judge Clifton Newman considered whether to allow the inclusion of evidence regarding Murdaugh's alleged scams, for which he faces 99 counts apart from the murder prosecution, during Jeanne Seckinger's testimony on Thursday morning without the jury present.
In court pleadings, prosecutors stated they thought Murdaugh killed his wife Margaret "Maggie" Murdaugh and his son Paul Murdaugh, age 22, to draw attention away from those alleged misdeeds, which the state claims were about to come to light on June 7, 2021, when they were slain.
Seckinger said on Thursday that she addressed Murdaugh that morning about $792,000 in missing cash and that legal fees ought to have been paid to the business, which was renamed Parker Law Group after Murdaugh was fired, rather than to specific lawyers.
Seckinger claimed that he and other company members became aware of a problem in May 2021 after failing to receive a fee check related to a settlement in a case Murdaugh had with another lawyer, Chris Wilson.
"Either he has a check that is legitimately payable to PMPED that he hasn't given us, or he has gotten a check due to him," Seckinger said.
Seckinger stated that she met Murdaugh on June 7 and demanded that he provide evidence to disprove her suspicions that he had received the money personally.
Seckinger added, "He gave me the assurance that the money was there and that he could obtain it."
The family of Mallory Beach, 19, who was murdered in February 2019 when a boat owned by Murdaugh and reportedly operated by Paul struck a bridge piling, was suing Murdaugh at the time.
Following a hearing in the civil lawsuit planned for June 10, 2021, three days after the deaths, Murdaugh's financial records, which state court files said "would expose (Murdaugh) for his years of alleged wrongdoing," may have been made public.
In their pretrial motion, the prosecution said that "Murdaugh used the killings as a distraction from himself and a tactic to buy some more time to attempt to prevent his financial crimes from being found, which, if disclosed, would have resulted in personal legal and financial catastrophe for Murdaugh." The missing $792,000 had already been spent, according to that document.
Seckinger stated on Thursday that the June 10 hearing was abandoned as a result of the passing of Maggie and Paul, and the company decided against questioning Murdaugh about the missing funds.
After the deaths, "Alex was distressed and unhappy and not in the workplace much," Seckinger recalled. "And nobody wanted to bother him with anything that we didn't think was missing, as we still had a few months before the year's end to fix it." Therefore, we decided not to bother him at that moment.
Murdaugh was disbarred following a flurry of accusations of white-collar theft and fraud, according to the South Carolina Attorney General's Office. He is currently facing 99 charges resulting from 19 grand jury indictments, including allegations that he defrauded his clients and the former law firm of nearly $9 million.
If found guilty in both cases, Murdaugh may receive two life terms without the chance of release.
The defence has contested the validity of the evidence in the murder trial, arguing that the fraud trials have no bearing on whether Murdaugh is guilty of killing his wife and son. Jim Griffin, the defence counsel, said on Thursday that allowing the evidence may prolong the murder trial by several weeks.
However, Creighton Waters of the South Carolina Attorney General's Office told the judge that the state hoped to concentrate on "just a few areas" most closely related to the case.
The Murdaugh family has longstanding ties to the local solicitor's office, and this is why the state is prosecuting the case.
"This specific crime has two things that are closely related in time." That was the argument that morning with Ms Seckinger about the (missing) fees that had been simmering for a time, according to Waters. Second, there is the upcoming hearing in the boat case that is taking place that week.
The defence questioned, "Can you come up with any reasons?" Waters commented about the defence's Wednesday cross-examination of a friend of Paul, who was questioned about whether he could conceive of any motive for Murdaugh to conduct the killings. The pal said he was unable to.
Waters said, "And all of this throughout his life, which is a fantastic chain of circumstances unlike anything ever witnessed." It is unquestionably vital for the jurors to take this into account when they analyse the ideal storm that was coming for this individual on June 7th.
Thursday's closed-door hearing of the prosecution's evidence demonstrated that Murdaugh's alleged misdeeds extended much beyond the $792,000. Murdaugh was questioned by Seckinger regarding the morning of the killings.
Separately, Waters ran down a long list of incidents in which he allegedly stole money from settlements in cases he handled for the law firm's CFO.
Seckinger provided evidence on the stand on Thursday that Murdaugh "stole" what amounted to millions of dollars from customers and the legal firm by providing documentation from the case after case. She said that the business was liable for making good on Murdaugh's theft.
Eventually, Murdaugh was questioned by the company's partners over the stolen funds.
Seckinger added, "And it was my understanding that Alex confessed it and that it was agreed he would quit," adding the company opted not to make the departure announcement until the start of the next week.
But before that could happen, Seckinger claimed to have overheard Murdaugh being shot while standing by the side of the road. Murdaugh later admitted to conspiring to have him killed as part of an insurance fraud scam, allegedly so that his son would be eligible to receive a $10 million life insurance claim.
Nobody knew what to assume, according to Seckinger, but the company promptly went through its records and hired an independent company to do a forensic audit.
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