Alex Murdaugh trial – live: Prosecution to rest case after bombshell testimony from housekeeper

The state is expected to rest its case this week in the high-profile double murder trial of disgraced legal dynasty heir Alex Murdaugh.

On Friday, prosecutor Creighton Waters said the team is on track to wrap up its case Wednesday – paving the way for Mr Murdaugh’s defence.

In total, the state has called 47 witnesses during three weeks of testimony as they seek to prove to jurors that Mr Murdaugh killed his wife Maggie and son Paul.

Witnesses yet to be heard from include Curtis “Cousin Eddie” Smith – the man accused of conspiring with Mr Murdaugh to shoot him in the head in a botched hitman plot so that his surviving son Buster would receive a life insurance windfall.

Attorney Mark Tinsley testified without the jury present about the lawsuit he brought against Mr Murdaugh on behalf of the family of Mallory Beach and how it was putting his finances under increased scrutiny at the time of the murders.

Mr Tinsley told the court the Mr Murdaugh claimed he was broke and couldn’t pay the settlement he was asking for his clients.

He didn’t believe this – so he filed a motion compelling Mr Murdaugh to reveal his finances.

A hearing for the suit had been scheduled to take place on 10 June 2021 and Mr Tinsley testified that he expected to take the lawsuit to trial in the late summer of 2021. But, the proceedings were derailed because of the murders.

He said that the “fuse had been lit” to expose Mr Murdaugh’s slew of alleged financial crimes – but that his problems would likely “be over” if the family was the “victim of an unspeakable tragedy”.

“Pretty quickly, I recognised that the case against Alex, if he were in fact the victim of some vigilante, would be over,” he said.

If the disgraced attorney was the “victim of an unspeakable tragedy” then no jury would side against him in the case, Mr Tinsley said.

He later testified: “There wouldn’t have been an explosion June 10. But the fuse was lit the moment that information became available in this case.”

He added that Mr Murdaugh “knew it was going to unravel” and that “the fuse was lit when he started stealing money”.

Under redirect, the witness testified that if the hearing had taken place on 10 June it would have set in motion the process that wouldn’t have stopped until Mr Murdaugh either settled the case or disclosed his finances.

In court on 3 February, Mr Murdaugh was accused of stealing a $4m settlement from his late housekeeper’s family, where prosecutors also raised questions about her mystery death.

Gloria Satterfield worked as the Murdaugh family’s housekeeper and nanny for more than 20 years, before she died in a mysterious trip and fall at the family home in 2018.

Her son Tony Satterfield told the court how Mr Murdaugh allegedly swindled almost $4m in a wrongful death lawsuit payout from the family in the aftermath of her death.

The court was shown evidence of two separate settlements in the wrongful death suit – one for $505,000 and one for $3.8m. Mr Satterfield testified that Mr Murdaugh did not tell him about the settlements and that he did not receive “one cent” of the money.

In June 2021 – the same month that Maggie and Paul were shot dead – there were reports in the media about a settlement and Mr Satterfield said he chased Mr Murdaugh about the progress of the case.

Unbeknown to him, Mr Murdaugh had already allegedly received payouts and pocketed them for himself.

Now, Mr Murdaugh is charged with almost 30 criminal charges over the Satterfield settlement.

Prosecutor Creighton Waters also hinted at the ongoing uncertainty about the nature of her death.

“Was she able to say how she fell?” he asked.

“No she was not,” Mr Satterfied replied.

At the time, Satterfield’s death was regarded as an accidental fall – however her death certificate cited her manner of death as “natural”.

In September 2021, SLED announced that it was reopening an investigation into her death and, in early 2022, officials announced plans to exhume her body. The investigation is still ongoing and her body is yet to be exhumed.

Jeanne Seckinger, the CFO at Mr Murdaugh’s former law firm PMPED, revealed she had confronted Mr Murdaugh over missing payments on the day of Maggie and Paul’s murders.

She told the court that by 7 June 2021 the law firm partners had noticed $792,000 worth of legal fees missing from the case he worked with Mr Wilson.

When she approached Mr Murdaugh to ask him about it that morning she said he gave her a “dirty look” – something that she said she had “ever received from him before”.

Hours later, Maggie and Paul were shot dead.

Over the coming months, the law firm partners uncovered an alleged multi-million-dollar fraud scheme where he had stolen millions from their clients and pocketed it himself – reaching a head with the confrontation and resignation on 3 September.

The day after he was forced to resign, Mr Murdaugh was shot in the head in what turned out to be a botched hitman plot.

During the shadow trial before the jury could hear the financial crimes evidence, Mr Murdaugh’s former best friend of 40 years broke down in tears in court as he described the moment that he learned the disgraced attorney had stolen millions of dollars from his law firm clients – and $192,000 from himself.

Chris Wilson choked up with emotion as he said the betrayal “knocked me down” and revealed that “I don’t know how to think anymore” about the man he had known and “loved” for most of his life.

Mr Wilson testified that the two attorneys worked on a case together where Mr Murdaugh made a $792,000 cut.

At Mr Murdaugh’s request, Mr Wilson made the check payable directly to him instead of PMPED. Then, in July 2021 – one month on from the murders – Mr Wilson said that his friend got in touch saying he had been unable to structure the fees as planned and needed to pay the money back and have it paid directly to PMPED.

Mr Murdaugh only had $600,000 to pay it back, with Mr Wilson saying that he covered the additional $192,000, on the basis that Mr Murdaugh would pay him back.

On 3 September 2021 – three months on from the murders – Mr Wilson said he finally learned his friend had been scamming him and many other people. He confronted him the next day.

Choking back tears, Mr Wilson revealed that his longtime friend broke down and confessed to stealing the money to fund a secret 20-year opioid addiction.

“He broke down crying,” he said. “I was so mad. I had loved the guy for so long, and I probably still loved him a little bit, but I was so mad, and I don’t remember how it ended. How did I not know these things or see these things?”

Under cross-examination, the defence cast doubt on the theory that it could have been Mr Murdaugh who threw Maggie’s phone along the side of Moselle Road.

Lt Dove admitted that cellphone data suggested Maggie and Mr Murdaugh’s phones were not in the same place at the same time at 9.06pm as the step data did not match.

This was important because 9.06pm is when the final orientation change – or movement – was recorded on Maggie’s phone.

Lt Dove testified that this movement could have been as it was being thrown from a vehicle to where it was discovered the next day, with the defence contending that Mr Murdaugh was at the family property walking with his cellphone at that time.

However, under redirect, prosecutors cast doubt on the defence’s timeframe for when the phone was tossed down Moselle Lane, as Lt Dove testified that an orientation change can only take place when the phone screen is on.

The SLED agent testified that the screen on Maggie’s phone was off between 9.07pm and 9.31pm so if the phone was thrown from a car during that time, there would have been no orientation change recorded.

When asked by the defence how such a throw could have been made from a moving vehicle with the phone travelling a distance of some 40 feet, a SLED agent noted it could be easily flicked horizontally like a frisbee and travel horizontally through the air landed as it did in the roadside leaves.

Prosecutors claim that Paul was shot dead first at around 8.50pm, followed by Maggie – with cellphone data being used to narrow down the murders to a precise eight-second window.

SLED Lt. Britt Dove testified that Paul’s last phone activity was at 8.48.59pm and Maggie’s was at 8.49.27pm.

Eight seconds later at 8.49.35pm, Paul received a text message but it went unread. Neither Maggie nor Paul used their phones after that time.

In futher dramatic courtroom testimony, jurors heard that calls Mr Murdaugh made to his wife on the night of the murders were mysteriously later “deleted” from his call log.

In court on Tuesday, Lt Dove testified that Mr Murdaugh had called Maggie five times between 9.04pm and 10.03pm on the night of 7 June 2021 after he had allegedly killed her and Paul. None of the calls were answered.

But, according to the call log on his cellphone, Mr Murdaugh did not place or receive any calls between 4.35pm on 4 June and 10.25pm on 7 June.

Lt Dove, who processed the three cellphones belonging to Mr Murdaugh, Maggie and Paul, testified that the trove of phone calls Mr Murdaugh made to his wife’s cellphone after he allegedly shot the victims dead was missing from his call log.

The only explanation for the missing data is that the call logs were manually and intentionally deleted by someone between the 7 June 2021 murders and his phone being seized by authorities in September 2021, he said.

Jurors were shown a Snapchat video Paul sent to Mr Loving less than one hour before he and Maggie were murdered.

The video, sent at 7.56pm on 7 June 2021, shows Alex Murdaugh on the grounds of the family estate.

In the footage, Mr Murdaugh, 54, is seen dressed in trousers, loafers and a blue button-down shirt – clothing that does not match what he is seen wearing in police bodycam footage in the aftermath of the murders.

In the bodycam footage, shown in court last week, the disgraced attorney is dressed in a white short-sleeved t-shirt and shorts.

Questions had already raised about this outfit as multiple law enforcement officials have testified that Mr Murdaugh and his clothing were “clean from head to toe” – despite his claims he had touched the bloody bodies of his wife and son.

It is not yet clear if investigators ever located or seized the second outfit Mr Murdaugh is seen wearing in the Snapchat video and jurors are yet to hear an explanation from the defence.

Less than one hour on from the 7.56pm Snapchat, Paul and Maggie were shot dead at around 8.50pm.

On Alex Murdaugh’s chilling final text to his wife moments after he allegedly killed her and their son was revealed in court during his murder trial on Tuesday.

Jurors were shown data from the cellphones of Maggie, Paul and Mr Murdaugh on the night of the murders.

Prosecutors say that Mr Murdaugh shot Paul first at 8.50pm and Maggie after.

Almost immediately after, cellphone data shows Mr Murdaugh made several calls to Maggie and other family members.

Mr Murdaugh first called Maggie at 9.04pm – minutes after he allegedly shot her dead – and the call went to voicemail.

He then texted her phone at 9.08pm, claiming he was going to visit his mother: “Going to check on M. Be right back.” The text was never read.

In total, Mr Murdaugh called his wife five times between 9.04pm and 10.03pm after allegedly killing her. None of the calls were answered.

His last text message to his wife came at 9.47pm, writing: “Call me babe.”

As well as calling Maggie, Mr Murdaugh’s cellphone records show he also made several calls to other numbers in the hour between the time prosecutors say the murder took place and he called 911. Prosecutors allege that Mr Murdaugh was seeking to build an alibi for that night.

Minutes after the final call, Mr Murdaugh called 911 at 10.07pm claiming to have found Maggie and Paul’s bodies.

In a dramatic day on 1 February, jurors were shown cellphone footage taken by Paul at the dog kennels just minutes before he and Maggie were shot dead which casts doubts on Mr Murdaugh’s alibi.

Off-camera, three voices are heard – Paul, Maggie and a man prosecutors say is Mr Murdaugh.

In dramatic testimony, two friends of Paul with close ties to the family told jurors that they are “100 per cent sure” that the voice belongs to Mr Murdaugh.

Cellphone data shows that the video was recorded for 58 seconds from 8.44.49pm to 8.45.47pm – less than five minutes before the murders. The disbarred attorney has claimed he was napping at the family home at that time.

Rogan Gibson, who had known Paul since they were young and described the Murdaughs as his “second family”, testified that he was “100 per cent sure” Mr Murdaugh is the voice in the footage. A second friend Will Loving echoed this.

As the footage was played in court, Mr Murdaugh appeared to rock his head up and down and cry.