Texts, Timelines & Twists: INSIDE THE MURDAUGH MURDER TRIAL

EIGHTEEN MONTHS AFTER HIS WIFE AND SON WERE FATALLY SHOT ON THE FAMILY'S SOUTH CAROLINA ESTATE, ACCUSED KILLER ALEX MURDAUGH FINALLY HAS HIS SHOCKING DAY IN COURT. IS THERE ENOUGH EVIDENCE FOR A JURY TO CONVICT HIM?

- STEVE HELLING

A hush fell over the packed courtroom in Walterboro, S.C., on the morning of Feb. 23 as Richard Alexander “Alex” Murdaugh approached the witness stand and was sworn in. Murdaugh, 54, scion of a family of lawyers and prosecutors who held power in South Carolina’s rural Lowcountry for generations, was finally directly answering to charges that he had fatally shot his wife, Maggie, and their son Paul at the family’s hunting lodge on June 7, 2021. He quickly grew emotional, his voice breaking as he seemed to struggle to speak. “I didn’t shoot my wife or my son. Anytime. Ever,” he told the jury, fighting back tears. “I would never do anything to hurt them.”

As the disbarred attorney’s emphatic denial was broadcast to viewers around the world, his Lowcountry neighbors were riveted. Gathering around TV sets in restaurants, bars and gyms, residents sat in stunned silence as one of the community’s pillars—now fallen—forcefully denied on the stand that he had “blown [his] son’s brains out” or viciously killed his wife. “Everyone stopped everything when he took the stand,” says Marta Chambers, who was working in a hair salon just blocks away from the courthouse. “No one wanted to miss a single word. We were finally hearing him explain himself after years of questions.”