Attorney Dick Harpootlian wants to take Murdaugh jury to Moselle crime scene

Alex Murdaugh’s attorney wants to take the jurors in his murder trial to the scene of the crime.

That was just one takeaway from defense attorney Dick Harpootlian’s opening statement Wednesday in the much anticipated double-murder trial at the Colleton County Courthouse.

Where prosecutor Creighton Waters unleashed a thunderous flurry of evidence intended to back Murdaugh into a corner, Harpootlian parried, ducked and weaved, at times striking back.

Harpootlian, who spoke to the jury some 27 minutes after Waters, told jurors they had just heard “theories” and “conjectures” about Murdaugh and the prosecution’s case was all about “smoke that concealed the truth.”

The jury will learn that law enforcement began to focus on Murdaugh from the beginning, and, in that focus, ignored other suspects, he said. The reality is that more than likely, there were two shooters, Harpootlian told the jury.

“They’ve been pounding that square peg in the round hole since June, 2021,” Harpootlian said.

To help prove his client innocence, Harpootlian said he plans to ask the judge to allow jurors to visit Moselle, the rural family estate where Maggie, 52, and Paul Murdaugh, 22, were shot and killed in June 2021.

The Columbia defense attorney and state senator also emphasized to the 12 men and women impaneled earlier in the day that they must presume Murdaugh is innocent of the crimes, even if their inclination is otherwise.

“When you read the police have arrested somebody, the natural inclination is to say, ‘Thank God they caught him,’” Harpootlian said. “We all do it. We assume the police arrested the person who committed the crime. ... Now you cannot do that. You took an oath.”

The veteran attorney took aim at the prosecution’s claims that they say will establish Murdaugh’s guilt.

Given the extensive injuries to both Paul and Maggie, a shooter standing in close quarters to them would be “covered head to toe in blood,” Harpootlian said, but photos from the time do not show noticeable blood spatter on Murdaugh’s clothes. If he changed clothes after the killings, Harpootlian said, they were never found even though law enforcement arrived at the home that night.

Harpootlian told the jury that if his client did make questionable statements on the night of the killings that made law enforcement suspect him, the state of shock Murdaugh was in discovering the bodies of his wife and son makes his statements understandable.

“It’s numbing. You go into shock,” Harpootlian said.

Harpootlian focuses on ballistics

He also took aim at ballistics evidence the state will use to tie the shots that killed his wife to a gun purchased by Murdaugh.

The state can’t conclusively make that determination, he said, because they don’t have the gun.

“What (prosecutor Creighton Waters) submitted to you as facts, are not,” Harpootlian said. “They are his theories, his conjecture.”

Most importantly, there is no evidence Murdaugh was anything other than a loving husband and father who bore no ill will toward his family, much less that he could “slaughter” them the way his wife and son were killed, Harpootlian said.

Harpootlian had Murdaugh stand when he described his family, and pointed out that Murdaugh’s surviving son, Buster, was present in the courtroom Wednesday.

Harpootlian also spoke at some length on the horror of the wounds to Paul and Maggie, especially Paul, whose brain had been blown out of his head by a shotgun blast.

Harpootlian stressed the horror of the killings because, he has said before trial, he is going to ask the jury how they can believe that a loving husband and father could ever do something like that.

“He (Murdaugh) didn’t do it. He didn’t butcher his own son,” Harpootlian said.

Only an hour before the killings, Harpootlian told jurors, Murdaugh was laughing and joking with Paul, and their encounter was caught on a video.

Maggie was “executed” as she was running away, Harpootlian said. That’s why she had no defensive wounds, he said.

The killing shots were delivered by someone who was close up, Harpootlian said, and whoever did the killings would have been drenched in blood. Yet investigators never found Murdaugh or his clothes soaked in blood, Harpootlian said.

Murdaugh trial to stretch weeks

It was the opening of what could be a lengthy trial at the Colleton County Courthouse on charges Murdaugh murdered his wife and son. Both were found shot to death at the family’s rural estate Moselle on June 7, 2021.

Murdaugh told investigators he was visiting his ailing mother at the time of the killings, and he discovered the bodies when he returned home. But prosecutors allege Murdaugh killed them as part of a plan to divert attention from a string of shady financial transactions that were on the cusp of unraveling.

Murdaugh has yet to be tried or convicted of any financial crimes, and it’s likely the defense will object to any evidence presented claiming the murders were motivated by financial misdeeds.

In making his remarks, Harpootlian was responding to points raised by Waters in his fiery opening. The evidence he intends to put in front of the jury, he said, includes:

▪ A raincoat that Murdaugh allegedly hid in his mother’s house about a week after the killings, which Waters said had gunshot residue on the inside lining.

▪ Gunshot residue also was found on the seat belt of Murdaugh’s car.

▪ The spent .300 Blackout cartridges found near Maggie’s body match those recovered from a gun range and a flower bed on the property and were fired by an AR-15-style rifle bought for Paul. The gun is currently “unaccounted for,” according to Waters.

▪ Stippling on Paul and Maggie’s body indicated that they were shot at close range, and the lack of defensive wounds means they didn’t think they were in any danger, Waters argued.

▪ Phone records will show Maggie, Paul and Murdaugh were all near the dog kennels on the family’s Moselle property minutes before Paul and Maggie were killed, Waters said. At 8:44 p.m., and 55 seconds the night of the murders, Paul recorded a video of a friend’s dog at the kennels. His mother and father can be heard in the background, Waters said. At 8:59 p.m., all activity on Paul’s phone stops. His mother’s stops 40 seconds after that. Murdaugh’s phone doesn’t activate again until 9:20 p.m, Waters said.

This story was originally published January 25, 2023 at 5:15 PM.

Bristow Marchant

The State

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Bristow Marchant covers local government, schools and community in Lexington County for The State. He graduated from the College of Charleston in 2007. He has almost 20 years of experience covering South Carolina at the Clinton Chronicle, Sumter Item and Rock Hill Herald. He joined The State in 2016. Bristow has won numerous awards, most recently the S.C. Press Association’s 2024 education reporting award.  Support my work with a digital subscription