It has been more than a year sinceAlex Murdaughtold police that he arrived home at his family’s 1,770-acre estate in Islandton, S.C., and discovered the lifeless bodies of his wife,Maggie, and son,Paul. They had been shot to death with two different firearms.
That was on June 7, 2021. At the time, Alex Murdaugh was a respected and powerful attorney in Hampton County. His well-connected family had a stranglehold on local politics: generations of Murdaughs held the office of 14th Circuit Solicitor — basically the district attorney — for more than 85 years.
While the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) would not comment on the charges, a law enforcement source with direct knowledge of the case tells PEOPLE in its latest issue that they have a “mountain of evidence” against Murdaugh — and that they took a year to charge Murdaugh because authorities wanted to properly investigate the murders.
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The law enforcement source tells PEOPLE that blood spatter allegedly found on Alex Murdaugh’s clothes indicates he was at the scene at the time of the murder, and not visiting his father at the hospital, as he later claimed.
Additionally, the source says that Murdaugh’s cell phone, watch, and vehicle GPS also contradict his assertion that he was continually with his father at the hospital. Investigators say that Murdaughlured Maggieto the scene, saying that he wanted to go with her to visit his ailing father, with whom she was very close.
Alex Murdaugh.Orange County Department of Corrections
According to several sources, Maggie and Alex hadhit a rough patch in their marriage, and she was staying at the family’s beach house on Edisto Island, approximately an hour away from the family’s estate. The law enforcement source tells PEOPLE that Maggie initially declined to meet Alex at the family home, suggesting instead that they meet at the hospital. Ultimately, she consented to meet at the property, planning to follow Alex to the hospital in her own vehicle.
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On her way to the house, Maggie allegedly messaged a friend, saying that something about her husband’s behavior felt “fishy,” the law enforcement source says. “He’s up to something,” Maggie allegedly wrote to her friend.
Perhaps the biggest piece of evidence that law enforcement has is cell phone audio and video that appears to place Murdaugh at the scene, talking with Maggie just moments before she was killed.
While the law enforcement source outlines the case against Murdaugh in this week’s PEOPLE, the accused murderer will appear in court on Wednesday morning for a bond hearing which should publicly outline at least some of the the evidence against him.
Maggie, Paul and Alex Murdaugh.
After his wife and son were murdered, Murdaugh made news again when he allegedly tried to stage his own death so that his one surviving son, Buster Murdaugh, 26, could benefit from a $10 million life insurance settlement. He was criminally charged in connection with the alleged botched suicide-for-hire plot and is awaiting trial in that case.
Murdaugh has pleaded not guilty to all of the previous counts; he has yet to enter a plea against the murder charges.
Murdaugh’s attorneys have not returned PEOPLE’s calls for comment, but they maintain his innocence in a statement. “Alex wants his family, friends and everyone to know that he did not have anything to do with the murders of Maggie and Paul,” his attorneys wrote. “He loved them more than anything in the world.”
source: people.com
