Thread by @AveryGWilks

🚨🚨🚨Alex Murdaugh Double Murder Trial Day 24 (Feb. 24) Megathread begins now 🚨🚨🚨

Alex Murdaugh will remain on the witness stand today for lead prosecutor Creighton Waters’ cross-examination. I’ll tweet updates.

#AlexMurdaugh #AlexMurdaughTrial #MurdaughTrial #Murdaugh

The Megathread from yesterday, which began with the news that Alex Murdaugh would take the stand (against the advice of his defense attorneys)

https://twitter.com/averygwilks/status/1628718983691083779

Our full story from a huge day of revelations and testimony yesterday

https://twitter.com/AveryGWilks/status/1628918701461323778

Our daily Understand Murdaugh podcast episode on AM’s testimony yesterday open.spotify.com/episode/7zswl1…

The @postandcourier Friday front page

A quick one-two of prosecutor Creighton Waters’ visible frustration at Alex Murdaugh’s lack of cooperation with him on the witness stand yesterday.

AM wouldn’t immediately agree to basic facts, such as whether he was wealthy or considered a successful lawyer.

📸 @GraceBeahm

We are back up in the front room of the wildlife center with the reptiles today. A birthday party has the main hall rented out. So I’m sitting beside Drama King the Eastern Kingsnake again.

Photos/exhibits from yesterday, via @GraceBeahm and @JAABPhoto

1. AM cries on the stand
2. AM's family reacts to his testimony
3. AM arriving at the courthouse
3. AM's family arriving at the courthouse

@GraceBeahm @JAABPhoto 1-2. Alex Murdaugh's assistant solicitor badge
3. A photo of AM carrying the badge at the hospital on the night of the 2019 fatal boat crash
4. The interior of AM's 2021 Chevy Suburban. AM kept the badge on the dash.

We will resume at 9:30 a.m. with AM on the stand.

Lead prosecutor Creighton Waters will continue cross-examining him.

The first two hours of questioning were almost exclusively about AM's financial crimes and the influence he and his family wielded in this corner of SC.

Waters said yesterday he has just 3-4 more hours of cross-examination to get through with Murdaugh.

But Waters also predicted the state would rest its case by last Wednesday. He was only off by about 48 hours.

Before we get going, here's our December profile of Creighton Waters, the lead prosecutor in this trial and the man who has led the state grand jury investigations into Murdaugh's finances and influence

postandcourier.com/murdaugh-updat…

Still no word on whether Mr. PeePaw Bubbers III will testify.

Today’s Daily Scoop pic.

This was my view when I woke up Sunday morning

Court is back in session.

Waters resumes his cross-examination by seeing if he and AM can agree on some things.

Waters: The money you were stealing was not just to pay for drugs, right?
AM: Sure
W: And your stealing increased over the years as we moved toward June 2021?
AM: Yes sir.

W: And it increased in particular after the 2019 boat wreck?
AM: No, sir.

And we’re back.

W: "I'm just trying to get through this so we don't get bogged down again like yesterday."

It’s deja vu all over again.

AM: “I don’t dispute, and I have never disputed since I was confronted on Labor Day weekend that I took money from my clients.”

Waters: “We’ve gone through that.”

AM: “But you keep asking me about it.”

Waters established that AM borrowed massive sums from Palmetto State Bank, one of his law partners and his father. Waters also establishes that AM paid them back with money he stole from his clients.

AM repeatedly says: “I don’t dispute that.”

If the jury doesn’t yet understand that AM lied to his clients and stole from them, they aren’t gonna get it.

AM explains why he stole from his good friend, Barrett Boulware. He says they had been partners in land deals that went bad in the Recession, and AM had to cover all the losses. That equated to millions of dollars. That’s why Boulware wound up essentially giving AM Moselle.

AM on that explanation: “To be able to look in the mirror, you lie to yourself.”

AM: “Barrett had owed me so much money that when I took his money, I just didn’t tell him. It was a lie by omission.”

AM explains that he would get a case that was supposed to be worth $100K, and he would win $300K for his client.

And that’s why he felt entitled to steal the overage. He says now he was wrong.

Our live updates feed for the day: postandcourier.com/murdaugh-updat…

Our daily TikTok from the Colleton County Courthouse. Spent some time recapping the highlights of AM's testimony thus far

tiktok.com/@postandcourie…

AM testifies he would take more than 2,000 mg of oxycodone a day most of the time. That’s nearly 70 pills (at 30 mg) a day.

AM: “Opiates gave me energy. Whatever I was doing, it made it more interesting. It made me want to do it longer. … In the beginning, it made it better.”

He said he would wake up and take pills immediately. He would feel agitation from not taking pills as he slept. “First thing I would do was take pills. … Agitation is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to opioid withdrawals.”

Waters: And you said when you were having withdrawals, you would do anything to make them stop.

AM: “Almost anything.”

Oh boy.

AM: He said he tried to self-detox dozens, maybe hundreds of times. It didn’t stick.

AM said he kept his pills on his person because he was afraid someone would find them.

AM: “I had a pocket full of pills on June 8th when I was sitting in David Owen’s patrol car.”

AM said he would pop painkillers any time he had paranoid thoughts. If he saw a patrol car behind him, he might pull over and take some.

AM is asked who saw him have these severe withdrawals before he admitted his addiction publicly: Mags, PawPaw, Bus, my dad.

AM testifies about Maggie discovering a bag of pills in his computer bag on 5/6/21 - a month before the murders.

He said she looked through his bag while he was inside an eye doctor’s office during COVID-19, when she couldn’t come in with him.

AM downplays that discovery, which was May 6, 2021 - a month before the slayings - as nothing unusual.

“They had been watching me like a hawk for years before May. May was just one occurrence where I let them down.”

Testy exchange in the courtroom.

AM: You keep claiming you’re hearing all these things for the first time. But when I got to jail, we would reach out to you and offer to tell you all these things. But you would never respond to Jim Griffin’s offers to meet with you.

Waters: Did you ever reach out to anyone in law enforcement and the prosecution and tell that story that you told the jury about the kennels before yesterday?

AM: No, sir.

Griffin objects. Judge Newman overrules. Griffin keeps objecting. Newman: “Sit down, Mr. Griffin.”

AM: At least since January, I’ve been reaching out to sit down and talk to y’all, and I never got a response to multiple requests.

Waters stresses that yesterday was the first time anyone heard AM’s new story about his whereabouts and movements on the evening of June 7, 2021.

AM: “Yesterday is the first time that I have said that openly.”

Waters: You, like you have done so many times in your life, had to back up and make a new story to fit with the facts of your life.

AM: “No, sir.”

W: “The second you’re confronted with facts you can’t deny, you immediately come up with a new lie. Isn’t that correct?”

Waters: Your own lawyer was repeating your story on national TV as late as November 2022 that you were home napping, not down at the kennels, on 6/7/21.

Griffin objects, says this violates attorney-client privilege.

Newman overrules. He says there is no attorney-client privilege to statements made on national TV.

AM clarifies that Griffin gave that interview to HBO much earlier than November 2022. But the HBO series aired in November 2022.

Waters keeps stressing AM’s practice of lying and making up new stories when confronted with facts he can’t deny.

AM denies PMPED CFO Jeanne Seckinger “confronted” him on 6/7/21 about missing fees. He said it was a short conversation. Seckinger was not angry. She seemed almost apologetic to be asking about it, AM said. He said he wasn’t concerned about it.

AM: “I had the impression that there was concern that maybe … I was hiding fees because of the civil boat case. That conversation was so quick. You keep using the term confrontation. I didn’t take it as a confrontation.”

Waters asks AM about confronting Mark Tinsley at the trial lawyers’ conference about his lawsuit against him in the 2019 boat crash case.

AM: “Absolutely, unequivocally never happened.”

AM has now disputed the testimony of at least four state witnesses, by my count: Shelley Smith, Blanca Simpson, Jeanne Seckinger and now Mark Tinsley. But prosecutors have done a good job of reminding jurors that AM is a liar.

Waters enters into evidence 6/6/21 texts between Maggie and Alex Murdaugh, which show Alex stayed at the hotel - instead of initially going to the baseball game - because he was suffering from withdrawals.

And now we’re moving on to 6/7/21, at last.

AM insists he and Paul did not have a Blackout rifle as they rode around the Moselle property that afternoon. He says they were not hog hunting. Hogs don't come out in daytime.

“We were not hog hunting. We were not looking for hogs. We did not have the .300 Blackout with us.”

AM says he returned to the main house at Moselle a little after 8 p.m., shortly after Maggie arrived. He said he showered then, possibly leaving his clothes on the floor where housekeeper Blanca Simpson found his khaki pants the next day.

Waters: How do Maggie and Paul end up at the kennels?

AM: I’m still not sure. But in looking at timeframes and GPS data, “I’m all but certain that Maggie and Paul went to the kennels together.”

AM: Maggie asked me to go to the kennels with her, and I wasn’t going to go.
Waters: How long after she left did you go down there?
AM: “It was very quickly.” It was hot. I’d already showered. I didn’t want to go to the kennel.

Waters: “Why did you change your mind?”
AM: “Because Maggie wanted me to.”

AM says he took a golf cart down there. Thinks it took a couple of minutes to get there from the main house.

W: How long had you been down there before Paul recorded the 8:44 p.m. kennel video?
AM: “Not long.”

AM: “In the video, Paw-Paw was standing in the kennel. When I got there, Paw-Paw wasn’t standing in the kennel.” He was in the driveway, near the kennel.

W: Did you tell Maggie at the time that you were going to Almeda?
AM: No.
W: Did y’all discuss it at all?
AM: I don’t think so.
W: Did you have any conversation with Maggie?
AM: Yes.

AM: I stayed on the golf cart. I got off to take the chicken from Bubba.
W: How long were you there before you took the chicken from Bubba?
AM: “A couple minutes.” He said he was “talking to Mags” during that time. He can’t remember what about.

W: “You remember a lot of detail about these new facts, but you don’t remember what you talked about?”
AM: “I don’t remember the exact details of what we talked about.” Believes they spoke about Paul.

W: Were you withdrawing at this time?
AM: No.

Waters: Were the dogs barking and carrying on and going into the woods and acting like there was somebody around that they didn’t know?

AM: “No. There was nobody around that the dogs didn’t know.”

W: "All right. Good."

AM: I would have had the chicken out of Bubba’s mouth within 10, 15 seconds of Maggie saying “He’s got a chicken.”

AM: Then I put the chicken up. Had to walk a few feet to do that. That took “seconds.”

Waters: “We’re at 8:46 now.” Then what?

AM: I left.

Waters: You said yesterday, you “got out of there.”

“Why did you get out of there so quick, Mr. Murdaugh?”
AM: “Because it was chaotic. It was hot. I was getting ready to do exactly what I didn’t want to do. I was getting ready to sweat. I was getting ready to work.”

W: Did you say goodbye?

AM: I would have said, I’m leaving. He can’t recall his final words to his wife and son. “I can’t tell you what those were, but it would have been something to the effect of: I’m leaving.”

Waters: What you’re telling this jury, you’re fuzzy on these kinds of details: “You jetted down to the kennels, you dealt with the chicken, and you jetted back.”

AM says he left the kennels about a minute after Paul filmed his video at the dog kennels.

Waters: Are these also convenient facts for your new story? “Does that sound like real life to you?”

AM: It could have been as late as 8:47 p.m. before “I left out of there.” But he thinks he left the kennels sooner.

Waters: And then it took 2 minutes to get back to the house.

AM: “Approximately.”

Waters: So, you'd have gotten back to the house at 8:49?

AM: 8:49.

AM: “I did go inside, and the TV was on.”
W: “And you laid down?”
AM: “I did.”
W: “And maybe dozed for a second, according to your new story?”
AM: “Maybe.”

AM: “If I dozed, it would have been for a short time.”

W: And then you’re up at 9:02, according to your phone data.

Waters: Did you have the Blackout and the shotgun on the golf cart when you went down there?
AM: No.
W: Did you see them when you went down there?
AM: No.

Waters: Did you hear anything at all during that time period?
AM: No, I did not.
W: Didn’t you tell law enforcement you thought they had pulled up?
AM: I did think they had pulled up. That’s what I told law enforcement.

Waters keeps referring to this as Murdaugh’s “new story” and alleges he’s made it up for this trial. AM doesn’t correct him. He just acknowledges he has never told the story publicly.

We're taking a 15-minute break.

Waters is squeezing the squeezing the timeline, in part simply by forcing AM to go on the record about the specific times he did things that evening and how long it took him to do them. It's very tight now.

A reminder that Alex Murdaugh's defense attorneys did not want him to take the stand, and this is part of the reason why.

Jim Griffin wants to mention something. Newman sits him down and says there will be an opportunity to do that later.

Jury is back.

W: Was there any blood on the chicken? I don’t believe so.
W: Did you wash your hands at all? I don’t believe I did.
W: Was Maggie messing with the hose? No.
W: Did she mess with it the entire time you were there, “according to your new facts today?” No.

W: Did you take your phone with you down to the kennels?
AM: “I must not have, if this is accurate.”

W: Is that normal for you?
AM: “Sure it is. If I know I’m going to the kennels and coming right back, that’s not unusual at all. You’ve heard the testimony about the service out there. The service was terrible.”

Waters: You’ve looked at these records a lot, haven’t you? (Hinting that AM is reconstructing his narrative to fit the new facts)

AM: Sure, I’ve looked at them - other than the OnStar records y’all just got.

Waters: 8:09 p.m. marks the last steps “recorded on your phone before 9:02, when you become a very busy bee.”

Waters: When you got back to the house (shortly after 8 p.m.), did you put your phone down?
AM: Yes.
W: Did you put it in the Suburban?
AM: Long pause. Blinks. Repeats Waters’ question.
AM: No. “I’m not sure where I put it.”

Waters: You don’t remember where you put your phone?
AM: “I don’t have a routine spot where I put it in, right at this spot or right in there.”

Waters again accuses AM of having a very specific memory at certain times and a fuzzy recollection of key facts at others.

Waters: At 8:17 p.m., Maggie’s phone disconnects from her Mercedes and begins logging steps.

(But AM claimed to have come back to the house and seen her and showered before that.)

AM: “I don’t believe that’s when she arrived. It was very normal for Maggie, when she’s ..."

"... driving, to jump out of the car, run inside, go to the bathroom, go do things” and send one of us back to her car to unplug her phone.

Waters: You’d agree that from 9:02 to 9:06, your phone finally comes to life and starts showing a lot of steps. What were you doing?

AM: I was getting ready to go to my mom’s house.

W: Getting ready? I thought you’d already showered. What did you have to do to get ready?

AM: Not doing anything specific. Maybe went to the bathroom. “I can’t tell you exactly what I was doing.”

W: Were you doing jumping jacks? Hitting the treadmill? Jogging in place?

AM: No.

W: You’ve been so clear about your new story and everything. What were you doing for these four minutes?

AM: "I was getting up. I was leaving. I was going to check on my mom. But specifically what I was doing? I don’t know."

AM: "I know what I wasn’t doing. And what I wasn’t doing was doing anything I believe you’ve implied:" Cleaning off. Washing off. Washing off guns. Washing off a raincoat.

Waters moves on to asking AM about his phone calls, including the calls that appeared to be deleted from his cellphone.

W: “Did you delete them, Mr. Murdaugh?
AM: “Not intentionally.”

AM says he has been in enough civil cases to know that when you delete a phone call, it does not disappear.

W: “Boy, you’re a busy bee on that phone right out of the gate at 9:02, right?”

AM: I called my dad at 9:05 p.m., and I agree I made other phone calls.

Waters: “The real reason, Mr. Murdaugh is that you as a lawyer and prosecutor are up at 9:02, finally have the phone in your hand, moving around and making all these phone calls to manufacture an alibi, is that not true.”

AM: “That’s absolutely incorrect.”

W: How do you remember everything else, but you don’t remember what you were doing in this 4-minute stretch to make all these steps?
AM: I remember clearly “that I never manufactured any alibi in any way, shape or form because I would not and did not hurt my wife and my child.”

Waters: Why don’t you remember what you were doing in this 4-minute critical period? Other than that “I was getting ready to go.”

AM: “That’s what I was doing.”

Waters: You were texting/calling Maggie. Why didn’t you go by the kennels on your way to Almeda?

AM: “There was no reason to. … It wasn’t important to do that. Me making those phone calls, … that’s simply me letting them know that I’m leaving for a minute, and I’ll be back.”

AM: It was not unusual that they didn’t answer. “It is odd, it is unusual, that they never called me back.” But Maggie was with Paul. She should have been as safe as she could be.

Waters: “Yes, she should.”

Waters: “Did you and Maggie ever specifically discuss her going along with you to Almeda?”

AM: “I don’t believe that we did. … It’s highly unusual for Maggie to go and visit just my mom. That whole situation made Maggie sad, and she didn’t like to go.”

AM disputes that he called Maggie that day and asked her to come home.

“I always wanted Maggie to come home. I would have talked to Maggie about coming home before she ever left to go to Charleston and to Edisto.”

AM said the evidence makes clear Maggie was already undecided about staying at Edisto that night. She left Bubba and Grady, the dogs, in their kennels when she left Moselle that morning. If she were going to stay in Edisto, she would have taken Bubba and probably Grady with her.

Murdaugh describes his mother’s caregiver Shelley Smith as a “good person” but disputes her account of his conversation with her in the days after the shootings.

Smith testified that Murdaugh told her if anyone asked, he was visiting his mother for 35-40 minutes on 6/7/21.

AM: I knew the data was going to come out in the investigation and verify my trip to Almeda that night.

“For me to tell her to say something when OnStar is going to show different just doesn’t make any sense.”

Waters: What about talking to Blanca Simpson in August?

AM: I wasn’t pressing her to lie or to align our stories. I was asking her what I was wearing because “a very short time before that David Owen is asking me questions and telling me I’m a suspect” in the murders.

Waters: You only care about yourself. Not giving accurate information to law enforcement. Why don’t you want to give accurate information to law enforcement?

AM: I do. But I had told a lie (about being at the kennels), and I was wedded to it.

Waters: You got to the scene. You got out of the car. And you checked the bodies before calling 911?

AM: That’s not correct. I don’t know what I said to law enforcement. “I pulled up, and I saw Mags and PawPaw. I jumped out of my car. I know I went back to my car ..."

AM: "... and called 911 as quickly as I could.” And “then I went to them and did the things that I did.”

AM insists he did not check Maggie and Paul’s bodies before he called 911. He doesn’t think he told law enforcement that either.

AM: “I know I checked them, but I don’t believe I checked them before I called 911.”

Waters and AM disagree about whether AM lied to law enforcement about when/whether he checked Maggie and Paul’s bodies. Now Waters is pulling up video of AM’s first interview with investigators, taken at 12:57 a.m. after the slayings.

I don't think this video proves what Waters believes it proves. At least from what we've heard so far, AM doesn't tell investigators he checked their bodies *before* calling 911.

AM said he didn’t mean to lie about his alibi at the outset of his interview with investigators. But he became paranoid during that interview. He says SLED agent David Owen freaked him out by asking about his relationships with Maggie and Paul.

We are on a lunch break until 2:15 p.m.

Some photos of the testimony today via @GraceBeahm and @JAABPhoto

@GraceBeahm @JAABPhoto We are back after lunch.

Griffin says Waters violated AM’s due process rights by highlighting the defendant’s failure to come forward with exculpatory information after his arrest. Waters says this is a non-issue. He says AM waived that right when he spoke about the case. Newman agrees.

Jury returning.

One must wonder if we will finish AM's cross-examination today.

Waters is trying to pinpoint exactly when in the 12:57 a.m. 6/8/21 first interview with SLED AM decided to lie about his alibi. AM isn’t really helping. He says he can’t tell Waters exactly. Waters is playing the video and stopping at points to ask AM if he had decided to lie yet

Whoa. AM provides his theory of the motive for the slayings.

AM: “I never, ever, ever under any point in time believed that those kids that were riding in the boat or their parents or their families … had anything to do with hurting Maggie and Paul.”

AM: But even sitting here today, “I believe that boat wreck is the reason why PawPaw and Maggie were killed.”

Waters: “Random vigilantes? The 5’ 2” vigilantes.”

AM: “The social media response that came from that (the boat wreck) was vile. The things that were said about what they would do to PawPaw, they were so over the top.

“I believed then and I believe today that the wrong person saw and read that because I can tell you for a fact..

AM: "...that the person or people who did what I saw on June the 7th, they hated Paul Murdaugh, and they had anger in their heart. And that is the only, only reason that somebody could be mad at PawPaw like that and hate him like that.”

Going back to relisten to that part.

Waters: “So what you’re telling this jury is that it’s a random vigilante, the 12-year-old, 5’ 2” people that just happen to know that Paul and Maggie were both at Moselle on June 7th, that knew that they would be at the kennels alone on June 7th, that knew that you would not..."

"...be there, but only between the times of 8:49 and 9:02, that they show up without a weapon assuming that they’re going to find weapons and ammunitions there, that they commit this crime during that short time window, and then they travel the same exact route that ..."

"... you do around the same time to Almeda. That’s what you’re trying to tell this jury?"

Alex Murdaugh: “You’ve got a lot of factors in there Mr. Waters, all of which I do not agree with, but some of which I do.”

Waters shows AM a photo of the golf cart parked outside the Moselle house. The photo is taken in daytime. Waters won't tell AM exactly when it was taken. AM says the golf cart is parked wrong, facing left. The family always parked facing right because that was how it was charged.

We have now moved on to the 6/10/21 interview.

Waters continues to bonk AM over the head with his own lies.

Waters plays the spot in the recording when agent Jeff Croft asks Murdaugh if the last time he saw Maggie and Paul was while eating supper.

“Yes, sir,” Murdaugh says in the video.

AM testifies he could not get a big enough loan from Palmetto State Bank to repay Chris Wilson all of the $792,000 he had stolen from the Mack Trucks case legal fees.

That's because Maggie had died and AM couldn’t get a loan against Moselle, which was in her name. Only Edisto.

Murdaugh testifies he was suspicious of SLED agent David Owen on the night of the slayings because he thought Owen was a different SLED agent he believed had manufactured evidence in a criminal case against Yemassee police chief Greg Alexander, a Murdaugh family friend.

Waters: Let’s move on to September 2021, when your law firm confronted you with unassailable evidence of your thefts.

W: “No wiggling out of this one, correct?”
AM: “I didn’t try to wiggle out of this one.”

AM *does* dispute that he meant to steal a check from the PMPED law firm that was owed to his brother.

AM says he got the check and asked about it and was told it was meant for him. It was meant for his brother.

AM attributes the issue in part to staff at PMPED and in part to his own lack of organization.

“You can look at my finances and you can see how I was doing - I didn’t balance a checkbook.”

Waters reminds AM of how he sat down with a SLED sketch artist after the September 2021 roadside shooting and answered SLED’s questions about a fictional assailant.

Waters: “You sat there and answered their questions just as effortlessly and convincingly as you’ve been trying to do for the past two days, isn’t that correct?”

AM: “No, sir. That’s not true.”

AM says he was in the throes of withdrawal from opioids, having a difficult time.

Waters: “When accountability is at your door, Mr. Murdaugh, bad things happen, isn’t that true?”
AM: “What do you mean by bad things?”
Waters: “June 7 happened. Sept. 4 happened.”
AM: I don’t believe June 7 happened because of accountability being at my doorstep.

Waters: “For the first time in your life of privilege and prominence and wealth, when you were facing accountability, each time suddenly, you became a victim, and everyone ran to your aid. Isn’t that true?”

AM: “I mean, I disagree with that.”

“Shame to you is an extraordinary provocation, isn’t that true, Mr. Murdaugh?” Waters asked.

AM on his lie after the roadside shooting: He didn’t successfully die, and “I had to have a story about how I got shot, so I lied.”

AM on the roadside shooting: My family and friends knew very quickly “this was something that I had done.”

Waters: “Mr. Murdaugh, are you a family annihilator?”
AM: “Like, did I shoot my wife and son? No.”

Waters has AM admit yet again that he lied to his family, his friends, his relatives, his law partners, his clients.

Waters: You lied “easily and convincingly” to “save your skin" for a decade.

“And you want this jury to believe a story manufactured to fit the evidence that you brought forth just yesterday after hearing this trial’s worth of testimony.”

AM: “No sir, that’s not correct.”

Waters plays a body cam video from CCSO deputy Greene, the first person to arrive on scene. In it, Murdaugh doesn’t tell the truth about going down to the kennels that evening.

Waters notes Murdaugh told the jury that he lied about his alibi because he was suspicious of SLED, his law partners had arrived and told him to have a lawyer before he spoke to the police, because SLED asked him about his relationships with his wife and son, ...

... and because CCSO had swabbed his hands for gunshot residue.

Waters notes none of that had happened when Greene arrived and Murdaugh told this lie.

Waters: “But you still told the same lie. And all those reasons you just gave this jury about the most important part ...

" ... of your testimony was a lie, too. Isn’t that true, Mr. Murdaugh?"

AM: “I disagree with that.”

Waters: “Nothing further.”

Murdaugh didn't say in that portion of the video that he hadn't gone down to the kennels, I should note. But he did say he saw Maggie and Paul about 45 minutes before leaving to see his mom. We now know it was more like 15 minutes or so.

We are back after a short break.

Griffin is up on redirect. He establishes that Murdaugh is facing pending charges for his alleged financial crimes.

We’ve heard the defense tell and remind the jury that Murdaugh is basically going to jail forever on the financial charges no matter what this jury does on the murder counts.

Telegraphing that even if they vote to acquit, they aren’t letting a possible murderer onto the street.

Griffin: “Alex, did you have Maggie’s phone with you at any time between 9:02 and 9:06?” (When he was taking a bunch of steps)
AM: “I didn’t have Maggie’s phone with me at any time that night.”

Griffin asks his client why he repeatedly pleaded with SLED to pull the data off Maggie’s phone.

AM: “I knew that whoever had done this to them had Maggie’s phone.” I knew that my phone and Maggie’s car were never together.

Griffin notes AM gave SLED a lot of inaccurate times. Were you lying?

AM: No. I was trying to estimate. But a lot of the times when I gave times, I gave them instructions on how they could verify those times.

Griffin: Were you lying to deputy Greene when you told him the last time you saw Maggie and Paul?

AM: “No, sir. I wasn’t lying to him.” Wasn’t trying to mislead him in any way.

Griffin: Did you believe the information of whether you were there or not there (at the kennels) would advance their (SLED’s) investigation in any way?

AM: No. “Because they were fine and doing good when I left there.”

AM on the roadside shooting in September 2021:
“I intended to be gone. I intended for him to shoot me. And I intended to be gone.”

G: Why did you make up the lie about the fictional shooter?

AM “My main concern at that point was that I did not want Buster knowing that I had tried to do that (assisted suicide). That was my motivation in telling that story.”

Griffin: “Alex, did you murder Maggie?”
AM: “I would never hurt Maggie.”

G: “Did you murder Paul?”
AM: “I would never hurt Paul. If I was under the pressure that they’re talking about here, I can promise you I would hurt myself before I would hurt one of them, without a doubt.”

Griffin is done.

Waters on recross.

Waters: You told SLED about all the data they could pull to help their investigation. And that’s because “as a prosecutor and a lawyer, you had been manufacturing an alibi to cover your tracks.”

AM: “No, sir, that’s absolutely wrong.”

Waters again alleges that Murdaugh has concocted this new story to fit the facts that have already been presented in this case, which shattered his original alibi.

Alex Murdaugh steps down from the witness stand after nearly two full days of testimony. We're taking a short break.

We're back after the shortest break of the trial

Judge Newman excuses the jury until 9:30 a.m. tomorrow. "Have a great weekend," he tells them.

Harpootlian says the defense has 4 witnesses to call Monday. Says they will wrap their case early Monday afternoon.

Waters says he will call one or two witnesses on the state’s reply case. “It will not be lengthy.”

There is light at the end of the tunnel.

Harpootlian asks about imposing time limits on closing arguments, which could be held mid-next week. Newman doesn’t seem inclined to do that.

We are done for the week. So ends week 5 of Alex Murdaugh's three-week double-murder trial.

And now we write.

My brain doesn't work. Judge Newman excused the jury until Monday, obviously. Forgot today was Friday.

I'm hopping on @NewsNation right at 7 p.m.

Our full story today, with a bit of breaking news wrapped in

https://twitter.com/averygwilks/status/1629300557092466690

Signing off for the night and week from the Walterboro Wildlife Center. Time to drive home.

🫡 Back Monday for more Megathread. 🫡