Alex Murdaugh, the disgraced heir to a once-powerful South Carolina legal family, is making a last-ditch attempt to have the murder charges against him dismissed—just five months before he is due to face a second trial over the 2021 killings of his wife, Maggie, and son, Paul.
The 58-year-old former lawyer appeared at the Lexington County courthouse on Friday morning for a hearing connected to his upcoming retrial.
Wearing a dark suit and tie, Murdaugh sat without shackles at the defense table. He appeared somber and repeatedly rocked in his chair as his attorneys and state prosecutors debated his request to throw out the indictments.
Murdaugh’s lawyers argued that the charges should be dismissed because David Owen, the lead investigator with the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, allegedly gave the grand jury false information about key evidence.
Defense attorney Jim Griffin said Owen wrongly claimed that Paul’s blood spatter had been found on the white T-shirt Murdaugh wore on the night of the shootings. Owen also allegedly told jurors that DNA from Murdaugh, Paul and Maggie was present in the area of the supposed blood evidence.
The claim was previously reported by local outlet FITSNews in spring 2022, citing law enforcement sources.
Following Owen’s testimony, the grand jury indicted Murdaugh on murder charges in July 2022.
But Griffin told the court that testing by SLED’s own laboratory found no human blood on Murdaugh’s shirt.
Disgraced legal dynasty heir Alex Murdaugh is seeking to have the murder indictments against him dismissed
From left, Buster, Maggie, Paul and Murdaugh. Maggie and Paul were killed at the family estate on June 7, 2021
At Murdaugh’s first trial, prosecutors acknowledged that no blood was found on his clothing but suggested he had changed clothes and washed himself after the murders.
Using an extensive PowerPoint presentation featuring photographs of the T-shirt, Griffin said the alleged blood evidence was highly damaging because it would have placed Murdaugh at the crime scene at the precise moment Paul’s “head was blown off.”
“If it were true,” Griffin told the court, “it is as good as a fingerprint at the murder scene…The problem is it never happened.”
“The grand jury was misled when they returned this indictment,” he added.
Griffin also said the claim had deeply affected Murdaugh, his surviving son Buster and their wider circle of friends and relatives, arguing that the allegation had “reverberated” and “spread like wildfire.”
Owen further told the grand jury that buckshot and birdshot matching the ammunition used to kill Paul had been found in guns belonging to the Murdaugh family at their 1,700-acre Moselle property in Islandton.
However, Griffin said, none of the guns had been loaded in the same configuration as the weapon used in the killing.
Investigators believe two firearms were used in the murders: a shotgun in Paul’s killing and an AR-style rifle in Maggie’s. Neither weapon has been recovered.
Griffin also cited another case involving Owen in which a murder indictment was dismissed after previously undisclosed evidence emerged.
He asked the judge to set aside the indictments, arguing that prosecutors could present the case to a new grand jury as soon as next month.
Prosecutor Creighton Waters countered that the blood-spatter testimony was merely a “side issue” during the grand jury proceedings.
Murdaugh’s defense claims the lead investigator misled the grand jury about alleged blood spatter on his shirt
Waters said the evidence most likely responsible for the indictments was a video recovered from Paul’s phone. The footage placed Murdaugh at the family’s dog kennels around the time of the murders and contradicted his account of where he had been that night.
The prosecutor also maintained that the ammunition allegation was not false because similar types of rounds had been found on the Murdaugh property.
Judge Debra McCaslin said she expects to rule on the motion to dismiss by the end of next week.
Should she dismiss the charges, prosecutors would have to return to a grand jury before Murdaugh could be tried again.
Friday’s hearing represents the latest development in a case that began on June 7, 2021, when Maggie, 52, and Paul, 22, were shot to death near the dog kennels at the family’s Moselle estate. That night, Murdaugh called 911 and said he had returned from visiting his mother to find their bodies.
The double homicide ultimately revealed a sprawling series of alleged crimes and scandals involving Murdaugh, including multimillion-dollar fraud schemes, a failed murder-for-hire plot and connections to several other unexplained deaths.
His 2023 murder trial, described as the Lowcountry’s “trial of the century,” marked the dramatic downfall of a man whose family had dominated South Carolina’s 14th Judicial Circuit for nearly 100 years.
Murdaugh was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.
He has continued to maintain that he did not kill his wife and son.
In May, the South Carolina Supreme Court overturned those convictions and ordered a new trial, ruling that Murdaugh’s right to a fair proceeding had been compromised when former Colleton County court clerk Becky Hill tampered with the jury.
The retrial is scheduled to begin on April 5, 2027, in Sumter County after the case was moved from Colleton County, where the original trial was held.
The dog kennels at the Murdaugh family’s Moselle estate, where Maggie and Paul were killed
The Murdaugh family’s 1,700-acre Moselle estate, where Maggie and Paul were shot dead
During Friday’s proceedings, the defense also disclosed that Othram, an investigative genetic genealogy laboratory, had received all of the DNA evidence for additional testing. The defense hopes the analysis will support its theory that someone else was responsible for the killings.
An unidentified male’s DNA—not Murdaugh’s—was reportedly found beneath Maggie’s fingernails and on her cellphone, which was discovered beside a road near the Moselle property.
The state did not test that evidence before Murdaugh’s first trial.
Prosecutors have dismissed the DNA as a “red herring,” while the defense says it could provide a lead to the person it believes was the real killer.
The judge previously approved the defense request to send the samples to Othram, the laboratory that helped identify Bryan Kohberger in the Idaho student murders case.
With the evidence now in the lab’s possession, the testing is expected to be completed within 90 days or sooner.
Although Murdaugh denies killing Maggie and Paul, he admitted to and pleaded guilty to numerous state and federal financial crimes. Prosecutors cited those offenses as a central part of their motive theory in the murder case.
The investigation also renewed attention on other mysterious deaths and incidents connected to the prominent family.
Buster Murdaugh, Murdaugh’s only surviving son, was recently seen after becoming a father for the first time
In 2019, Paul faced charges over a boat crash that killed his 19-year-old friend Mallory Beach. He was awaiting trial in that case when he was murdered.
Before that, the family’s longtime housekeeper, Gloria Satterfield, died after a mysterious trip-and-fall accident at Moselle.
The family was also mentioned—without evidence—in connection with the unsolved 2015 killing of Stephen Smith, a gay teenager.
Three months after Maggie and Paul were killed, Murdaugh allegedly attempted to recruit Curtis “Cousin Eddie” Smith to stage his own shooting. The plan was reportedly intended to provide Buster with a life insurance payout.
Murdaugh remains held at a maximum-security prison in South Carolina, where he is serving 27-year and 40-year sentences for his financial crimes.
He is scheduled to return to court on January 20.
