(NewsNation) — The prosecution questioned South Carolina lawyer Alex Murdaugh Friday over his claim that he lied to law enforcement about his whereabouts on the night his wife and son were killed.
Paul Murdaugh, 22 and Maggie Murdaugh, 52, were found dead on June 7, 2021 on their sprawling hunting estate called Moselle, roughly 70 miles west of Charleston, South Carolina. Prosecutors say Alex Murdaugh, 54, shot them to death to deflect attention from the imminent revelation of a decade of financial crimes.
During Friday’s testimony, prosecutor Creighton Waters took Murdaugh through a timeline of the night his son and wife died. Waters used cellphone and car-tracking data to challenge what he said were inconsistencies in Murdaugh’s story.
Murdaugh has said in the past he was taking a nap that evening, then went to his mom’s house before finding Maggie and Paul at kennels near their property. Data shows Paul and Maggie Murdaugh stopped using their cellphones at about 8:49 p.m.
But data from Murdaugh’s phone also shows that he took 283 steps between 9:02 p.m. and 9:06 p.m — a fact the prosecution seized on.
Murdaugh said he was getting ready to go to his mother’s house at this time, but said he didn’t know what he was doing exactly.
“What were you so busy doing?” Waters asked. “Going to the bathroom? Got on the treadmill … jog in place? Do jumping jacks? What were you doing, Mr. Murdaugh, in those four minutes?”
According to his cellphone data, Murdaugh made a number of phone calls after his wife and son died.
Waters used the phone calls Murdaugh made around this time to accuse him of manufacturing an alibi, which the defendant denied.
“It is an absolute fact that I am not manufacturing an alibi,” Murdaugh insisted.
Murdaugh chose to take the stand in his own murder trial on Thursday. During the trial, he denied killing his wife and son, though he admitted he lied to police about the last time he saw them.
Murdaugh originally told police he had been visiting his mother in another town and was not near Moselle before the killings. But several witnesses previously said they heard the former attorney’s voice, along with his wife’s and son’s, on a cellphone video taken at the kennels on their property minutes before Maggie’s and Paul’s deaths.
An addiction to opioids, Murdaugh said Thursday, was the reason why he lied to law enforcement, as it made him paranoid and distrustful of state agents.
On Friday, Waters asked why he did not say anything about this previously. Murdaugh argued that he tried to meet with the prosecutor’s office, but that he did not get an opportunity to do so.
“You were begging for a meeting, but you admit information was never conveyed that you wanted to change your story after multiple interviews with law enforcement about what happened that night, including the most important fact of all, which is when the last time you supposedly saw your wife and son alive was,” Waters said.
In response, Murdaugh said he doesn’t know “exactly what was conveyed or not to you, because I wasn’t part of that.”
But the prosecution insisted, still, that Murdaugh wasn’t being truthful about lying to police.
“You, like you’ve done so many times over the course of your life, had to back up and make a new story that kind of fits with the facts that can’t be denied,” Waters said.
“That’s not true,” Murdaugh said.
In his remarks Friday, Murdaugh for the first time blamed anger on social media aimed at his son for the killings. Paul had been involved in a boat wreck that killed a teenager and was charged with boating under the influence.
Waters said during the trial that Murdaugh brought up the crash multiple times, including in his 911 call, and then in his first interview with police.
Although Murdaugh said he never believed any of the kids in the boat with Paul or their parents would have killed him, there were “so many leaks” and “misrepresentations” of his son that ended up in the media.
“When I tell you the social media response that came from that was vile,” Murdaugh said. “I believe then and I believe today that the wrong person saw and read that because I can tell you for a fact the person or people who did what I saw on June the 7th — they hated Paul Murdaugh and they had anger in their heart.”
In addition to his murder charges, Murdaugh is being held without bail on charges that range from stealing from clients to tax evasion.
On Friday, lead prosecutor Creighton Waters asked about the amount the defendant stole in the year 2019 alone. Murdaugh confirmed that number was $3.7 million, the most he’d stolen up to that point.
Waters also questioned Murdaugh about what he used the money for, and whether he would use stolen money to pay back people he owed.
Criminal defense attorney Bernarda Villalona, who has also been a prosecutor, said on “Morning in America” Friday that for Murdaugh, there’s “no going back now.”
“The one thing that we do know … is that even if he’s found not guilty in this case, he will definitely be found guilty of those financial crimes based on those admissions during direct examination, and also cross-examination,” Villalona said. “So he’s going down for that.”
“He basically just walked himself into jail on all of those financial crimes,” Jesse Weber, an attorney and anchor for the Law & Crime Network, told NewsNation. “It’s an interesting strategy: ‘I’m going to admit to all of the illegal stuff I’ve done.'”
However, saying he is guilty of those financial misdeeds was something Murdaugh had to do to gain credibility with the jury, Villalona argued.
Along with Murdaugh’s financial issues, his addiction to opioids was also detailed for the court on Friday.
“I would have been taking anywhere from 1,500 milligrams maybe to maybe 1,000 milligrams or 1,200 milligrams on a day I didn’t take as much or didn’t have as much,” Murdaugh said. “Most days were more than that, and many days would be more than 2,000 milligrams a day.”
That’s about 60 pills a day, Murdaugh confirmed, but there were days that he took more or less than that.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.