Alex Murdaugh, the disgraced South Carolina attorney on trial for allegedly shooting his wife and son, admitted Thursday under oath that he had repeatedly lied to authorities, swindled clients out of millions of dollars, and asked a distant relative to shoot him in the head as part of an elaborate scheme that would enable his eldest son to collect life insurance.
Murdaugh, who repeatedly sobbed on the stand, blamed his spiral on an addiction to oxycodone that had gotten so severe that he drained his bank account to keep up with the cravings.
“I’m not quite sure how I let myself get where I got,” he said on the stand.
Wiping away tears, he testified that despite the circumstances, he would never do anything to hurt his wife Maggie Murdaugh, 52, and their youngest son, Paul Murdaugh, 22. Both were gunned down in June 2021.
“I did not shoot my wife or my son any time — ever,” Alex Murdaugh said.
Murdaugh, who had denied being in the vicinity of the shootings for nearly two years, admitted he lied to authorities about his whereabouts. He said he was near the dog kennels on the family’s sprawling hunting estate near where Maggie and Paul Murdaugh were found lying in a pool of their own blood and said he lied because he was “paranoid” as a side effect of the oxycodone abuse.
Then he got graphic.
“I don’t know why I tried to turn him over,” he testified. “I mean, my boy’s laying face down. And he’s done the way he’s done. His head was the way his head was. I could see his — I could see his brain laying on the sidewalk. I didn’t know what to do.”
Murdaugh said he used Paul’s belt loop to try and turn him over.
“And when I did, his phone popped out of his — I mean, his phone popped out and I just picked it up, and I put it right back there.”
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His team of attorneys has argued that he had neither the motive, the prowess, nor the time to execute his wife and son. They have also pointed to videos shot on the younger Murdaugh’s cellphone that showed the family bonding.
The prosecution, which rested its case on Friday, has painted Alex Murdaugh as a powerful and wealthy lawyer who came from a privileged background and believed the law did not apply to him. Its cross-examination of Murdaugh began late Thursday afternoon.
