CNN
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Two witnesses in Alex Murdaugh’s murder trial told the court on Wednesday they were “100%” sure Murdaugh’s voice was in what prosecutors said was on video, undermining the discredited The former South Carolina attorney claimed when his wife Maggie and 22-year-old son Paul were shot.
According to the lieutenant, the video, which is less than a minute long, was filmed on Paul’s cell phone starting at 8:44 p.m. on the night of the 2021 killing. David Britton Dove, director of the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division’s Computer Crime Center, extracted forensic data from the cell phones of Murdo, his son and his wife.
Three different voices can be heard in the video, which Dove testified Wednesday appeared to have been recorded in the Murdaugh family’s kennel area. Although Dorff didn’t recognize the voices himself, “you could tell they were different voices,” he said.
Prosecutors believe one of the voices — the only other voice in the video besides the victim’s — belonged to Alex Murdaugh, who was present at the time of the murder. While Murdo insisted during his interview with law enforcement that he was not present, two witnesses on Wednesday backed up prosecutors’ account.
Rogan Gibson, who said he was a close friend of Paul’s and that the Murdos were like a second family to him, told investigators shortly after the killings that he was 99 per cent sure he was in a relationship with Paul. Alex Murdaugh’s voice was heard on the phone at 8.40pm that night. When he saw the video in November, he told investigators he was 100 percent sure the voice in the background was Murdo’s — a claim he reiterated in court on Wednesday.
When asked by State Attorney Creighton Waters if he recognized Alex’s voice, Gibson said, “Yes, sir.”
“100%?” Waters asked. “Yes, sir,” Gibson replied.
Paul’s friend and another witness, Will Loving, also testified that he was “100%” sure that the voice in the video was that of Alex.
Prosecutors say cellphone evidence is key to their indictment of Murdo, who has pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder and two counts of possessing a weapon during the murder of his wife Margaret “Maggie” Murdo June 2021 7 with his 22-year-old son Paul.
Murdo called 911 the night of the murder to report that he had found his wife and son shot dead at their home in Allanton, South Carolina — a property called the Moselle.
But prosecutors accused Murdo of committing the murder to divert attention from a series of allegedly illegal schemes he carried out to avoid “personal legal and financial harm,” according to court documents. In addition to the murder charge, Murdo faces 99 other charges involving financial crimes, according to the state attorney general.
Evidence will show that Murdo’s alleged financial crimes “were coming to light” when his wife and son were killed, the state claimed.
Gibson said he has known Murdorf almost his entire life. He testified that Alex Murdaugh’s voice can be heard in the video asking Bubba, the family’s yellow lab, to drop a chicken from his mouth.
At 8:40 p.m. on the night of the shooting, Paul Murdaugh called Gibson to ask if there was a problem with Gibson’s dog, Cash, who was in Murdaugh ) in a kennel on the property. The two tried to make a video call so Gibson could see the dog, but Gibson testified that the reception wasn’t good enough.
Gibson said Paul told him that if FaceTime didn’t work, he would take a video of the dog and send it to him, but he never received the footage. Gibson said he tried calling and texting Paul after the video call failed, but his friend never responded.
Attorney Waters of the South Carolina Attorney General’s Office — who is prosecuting the case due to the Murdo family’s decades-long ties to the local attorney’s office — teased the video in his opening statement last week , said Alex claimed to investigators that he was dozing off at the house, and video evidence showed him showing up at the family’s kennel, where the bodies of his son and wife were found.
“You’ll see that video, you’ll hear witnesses say Paul’s voice, Maggie’s voice and Alex’s voice,” Waters said in court as Paul was filming one of his friend’s dogs , because they were concerned about the animal’s tail. Murdo “told anyone who would listen that he was never there … the evidence will prove he was there.” Minutes before Paul’s phone was “locked forever,” he and two The victims were all at the scene of the murder.
Defense barrister Dick Harpootlian said in his own opening statement that the audio in the video obtained by the prosecution would only show Murdaugh and his wife having a “normal discussion” with “no animosity”. Harpootlian claimed Paul was “very happy”. “Nobody was there to threaten him. Dad wasn’t going to pull out a shotgun and kill him.”
In cross-examination by the defense on Wednesday, Gibson said Alex and Murdoch had a good relationship and spoke of Alex being an affectionate and loving father with his sons. Alex was like a second father to him, Gibson said.
Gibson testified that Murdo cried many times and was “really distraught and sad and just torn” by the death.
“Can you think of any situation you can imagine, knowing them as well as you, in what circumstances would Alex brutally murder Paul and Maggie?” asked defense attorney Jim Griffin.
“I can’t think of one,” Gibson replied.
Defense attorneys also questioned Gibson about how sheds, workshops and vehicles on Murdo’s property were often unlocked, and that firearms were often left unguarded or just lying about. Gibson acknowledged that it could have been easy for someone to sneak into the property and steal things. After being redirected from the prosecution, Gibson admitted he never heard Paul complain about people doing this.
In testimony Tuesday, Dove, the 15th witness called by the prosecution, detailed Maggie’s phone communications on the night of the killing, including a text message from Alex at 9:47 p.m. that read: “Call me Baby.” It was never read.
In opening statements last week, Waters told jurors Murdo called his wife multiple times that night, then texted him to visit his mother and drove to Almeida, South Carolina.
“It’s up to you,” Waters said, “to decide whether he’s trying to create an alibi.”
On the night she was killed, Maggie read two text messages in a group chat with her family — at 8:31 p.m. and 8:49 p.m. — before her phone was locked, according to Dove’s testimony Tuesday. For a few seconds, she was talking to the family about the last time Murdo’s father, who was in ill health, was there.
A few minutes later, at 8:53 pm, Maggie’s phone’s display turned off. At 8:54 p.m., the orientation of the screen changed to landscape and the camera was activated — indicating, Dove said, that the phone had been moved, and the camera was trying to locate Maggie’s face on the screen. Unlock attempt failed.
For the next hour, Maggie’s phone showed constant missed calls from her husband, Dove testified, along with evidence that it had switched to portrait mode. Experts say it’s another sign that the phone may be in someone’s hands.Just before 10:04 p.m., a final call from Murdo was missed
But Dove said Wednesday that the calls appear to have disappeared from Murdo’s phone, citing phone records showing an outage between June 4 and June 7 at 10:25 p.m.
“Gapes like this indicate that the ‘call’ was actually removed from there,” Dorff said, adding that the only way to remove calls from the logs was to do it manually.
Asked whether the calls had been removed from the log, Dove said, “It would look like that,” noting there was no way of knowing when they were removed or who was responsible.
Additionally, Dove said Wednesday that while relatives were texting about his dying father, Murdoch was in the same group chat as his wife. While there was evidence Maggie read the two messages, Murdo did not read them until the next day, although he told state investigators he was concerned for his father’s health, Dove said.
The behavior appeared to be outside of Murdaugh’s typical texting habits, with Dove testifying that Murdaugh usually had a habit of checking texts within five minutes, sometimes 30 to 40 minutes.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misspelled Murdaugh’s last name. The story also mischaracterized parts of Logan Gibson’s testimony. He told investigators shortly after the killing that he was 99 percent certain he heard Alex Murdorf’s voice during the 8:40 p.m. phone call with Paul.