Day 9: Witness says dozens of calls missing from Murdaugh’s phone on day of murders

Alex Murdaugh, a once prominent Hampton-based attorney from a well-known politically-connected family, is on trial in the deaths of his wife, Maggie, and son, Paul.

Murdaugh has pleaded not guilty. He faces life in prison without parole if found guilty. The trial started last week with jury selection, opening arguments and the initial round of witness testimony. It is expected, for now, to run through Feb. 10 in Walterboro.

How to watch the Murdaugh double murder trial, who to follow from The State, Island Packet

5:50 p.m. — Court adjourns, financial evidence hearing tomorrow

Judge Clifton Newman has sent court into recess until 9:30 a.m. Friday.

Friday morning will kick off with more argument from defense and prosecution over whether it’s appropriate to present evidence of Alex Murdaugh’s alleged financial crimes in the double-murder trial.

Murdaugh has been indicted, but not convicted, of numerous white-collar crimes. Defense attorneys Jim Griffin and Dick Harpootlian have argued extensively that the crimes aren’t relevant to the murder of Maggie and Paul Murdaugh, while prosecutors claim the monetary issues are Murdaugh’s motive for allegedly committing the murders.

Earlier Thursday, Judge Clifton Newman declared if neither party could reach an agreement on the evidence, he would “make the call.”

It seems unlikely either legal team will back down, and Newman will have to make the trial’s most consequential ruling.

5:25 p.m. — Friend says Alex admitted to stealing money, drug problem

During emotional testimony, Alex Murdaugh’s longtime friend, Chris Wilson, shared a conversation in which he claimed Murdaugh admitted to taking money from his own law firm and clients.

The two met at Murdaugh’s parent’s home in September 2021, Wilson said. The conversation took place shortly after Murdaugh had been forced to resign from Parker Law Group, his former law firm.

“I had never had any dealings with him that I had any reason to distrust what he was telling me. He was a partner in that firm, he had the authority as far as I knew to make decisions,” Wilson said of Murdaugh’s request to receive his fee checks in a new format.

Murdaugh previously asked Wilson to disperse fees from a January 2021 case in three separate checks, which Wilson said was different than previous allocations. Murdaugh had told Wilson he intended to structure the money into different annuities to be paid over time.

In the months after Maggie and Paul Murdaugh’s deaths, Wilson said Murdaugh told him he wasn’t able to structure the money the way he’d thought, and that the $792,000 in fees had to go back through Wilson’s trust account.

Murdaugh sent Wilson $600,000 of the money, but told Wilson he couldn’t access the remaining $192,000, or else it would be penalized on withdrawal. Wilson covered the remaining $192,000 himself, he said.

In August 2021, Wilson was informed by an attorney at Parker Law Group that Murdaugh had allegedly siphoned money from the firm. When they met in September 2021, Wilson demanded to know what else Murdaugh hadn’t told him, but said he was still “sensitive” of his friend’s emotional state.

“I mean, I loved the guy for so long, and I probably still loved him a little bit. But I was so mad,” Wilson testified.

Wilson said Murdaugh admitted to struggling with an opioid addiction for two decades, and to taking money from the law firm.

“He was concerned about me getting my $192,000 back, or seemed concerned,” Wilson said. “I told him I wasn’t worried about that, I wanted to make sure there wasn’t something else.”

About a month before the conversation, Wilson had Murdaugh write him a promissory note indicating Murdaugh would repay the $192,000.

“I was concerned, just like everybody else, everybody in his firm, everybody in his family, that he was gonna do something to himself, that he was gonna kill himself,” Wilson said.

4:45 p.m. — Alex’s ‘best friend’ takes the stand

Prosecution has called as their next witness Chris Wilson, who went to law school with Alex Murdaugh and said Murdaugh was one of his closest friends.

Wilson’s testimony opened emotionally.

“He was one of my best friends, and I thought he felt the same way about me,” Wilson told lead prosecutor Creighton Waters.

“Do you feel that way now?” Waters asked.

“I don’t know how I feel now, Mr. Waters,” Wilson said, his voice noticeably wavering.

Murdaugh told Parker Law Group’s CFO, Jeannie Seckinger, that Wilson’s law office had the $792,000 in missing fees that Parker Law never received. In January 2021, Wilson and Murdaugh tried the case the fees were from together.

4:30 p.m. — Fake Forge accounts introduced

In September 2021, Michael Gunn, an employee with financial firm Forge Consulting, received a phone call from Lee Cope.

Cope, an attorney for Parker Law Group — Alex Murdaugh’s former firm — called to ask Gunn if Forge had any files for a list of names Cope provided “in confidence,” Gunn testified.

Gunn confirmed that the consulting firm had no records of any kind related to the first list of names.

Cope also asked if the firm banked with Bank of America, Gunn told the court Thursday.

“I told him that we had banked with Bank of America, but had not done so for about three or four years,” Gunn said.

Just after Labor Day in September 2021, Gunn said he discovered that Murdaugh was allegedly using Forge Consulting’s name to take settlement money from his own clients.

“I spoke with Lee Cope and he told me that Alex had been using an account called Forge to process those checks,” Gunn said.

“Is that a legitimate account?” lead prosecutor Creighton Waters asked.

“Absolutely not,” Gunn answered.

Earlier Thursday, with the jury absent, the court heard testimony from Parker Law CFO Jeannie Seckinger. Seckinger said she confronted Murdaugh about missing legal fees on the day that Maggie and Paul Murdaugh were murdered.

The missing fees that caught her attention, Seckinger said, totaled $792,000.

Judge Clifton Newman has yet to rule if the jury will be presented with evidence related to the financial crimes.

4:15 p.m. — Court again confronts admissibility of financial evidence

The state has summoned Michael Gunn, a consultant at Forge Consulting, to the stand.

Forge Consulting is the financial firm whose name Alex Murdaugh allegedly used by creating a fake account to which he would deposit money that was intended for Murdaugh’s clients in legal settlements.

Forge has denied involvement in Murdaugh’s alleged “inappropriate conduct.”

The jury has left court for the day. Gunn’s testimony will help Judge Clifton Newman determine if the jury will hear any evidence or testimony related to financial misdeeds Murdaugh has been accused of, but not convicted.

The state has leaned heavily on the possibility of financial ruin motivating Murdaugh to allegedly kill his wife and son, Maggie and Paul Murdaugh.

4:10 p.m. — No blood, tissue found in Moselle drains after murders

Defense attorney Dick Harpootlian pressed Katie McCallister, the SLED agent who searched the bathrooms at Alex Murdaugh’s home on June 8, 2021, regarding the presence of blood in bathtub and sink drains.

“When you look at the drain in a shower, if somebody’s recently showered off blood, you would expect to see some trace evidence there, would you not?” Harpootlian asked.

McCallister responded that she was unsure she was “qualified to answer that.”

She did confirm that SLED has teams that would swab drains to search for traces of blood or tissue, but said those specialists were never called to Moselle to her knowledge.

“You were the only one to (check the drains), correct?” Harpootlian said.

“Yes,” McCallister answered.

“You’re telling this jury you saw no evidence of blood, tissue, or anything that would indicate that somebody had showered, or washed off, or bathed to remove evidence of a crime, is that what you’re telling us?” Harpootlian asked.

“Yes sir,” McCallister confirmed. “There was nothing visible to me.”

The court has now entered a 10-minute break. The state’s next witness is expected to arrive around 4:30 p.m., lead prosecutor Creighton Waters said.

The jurors have since been excused, and will return to court at 11:30 a.m. Friday.

4 p.m. — State calls next witness, 5th SLED investigator

SLED senior special agent Katie McCallister, of the Lowcountry region, has taken the stand.

McCallister is the fifth SLED agent to take the stand so far. She responded to Moselle on June 8, 2021, the day after Paul and Maggie Murdaugh were killed.

McCallister was one of the agents present when Maggie’s cellphone was discovered about a half-mile from the crime scene.

3 p.m. — Investigator says calls missing from Alex’s phone on June 7

Dylan Hightower, an investigator with the 14th Circuit Solicitor’s Office, said there was a discrepancy between information pulled from Verizon’s call records and data pulled directly from Alex Murdaugh’s phone.

When Hightower reviewed call records law enforcement received from Verizon, the network recorded dozens of phone calls that were missing from the device itself.

“During that time frame I compared the call logs from the extraction, or from the actual device, to the call logs that I saw on the call detail records from Verizon,” Hightower said. “On the data in question, on June 7, I only saw two FaceTime calls on the phone extraction, and I saw a series of around 73 phone calls on the Verizon record.”

“What did that tell you when you saw that missing information?” asked prosecutor John Conrad.

“It could be a multitude of things,” Hightower said. “They were either removed by the user, or the one responsible and using the device, it could’ve overlapped from the call log history, it could’ve been a series of things.”

“So there’s no way for a user to delete records from Verizon, correct?” Conrad said.

“No sir, there is not,” Hightower confirmed.

The extraction method Hightower used on Murdaugh’s phone at the time couldn’t detect “deleted artifacts” that may still have had traces on the phone, he testified.

“As far as calls themselves, when did you start seeing call records start (on the cellphone itself)?” Conrad asked.

“Right around the late morning, early afternoon of June 8, 2021,” Hightower answered.

Hightower said one explanation for the gap between the phone’s call records and calls recorded in Verizon’s data could be a user manually deleting them or call records “overlapping,” meaning older data is deleted to free space on the device.

Hightower did not say if the calls were incoming or outgoing, or who they were made to or from.

2:30 p.m. — Court resumes with 14th Circuit investigator on the stand

Dylan Hightower, a criminal intelligence supervisor in the 14th Circuit Solicitor’s Office, has taken the stand.

The jury has returned to the courtroom after being absent since 10:30 a.m.

Hightower responded to the scene of Maggie and Paul Murdaugh’s murder the day after, on June 8, 2021. He testified that he flew a drone and captured aerial imagery of the Moselle property that day.

1:10 p.m. — Judge moves proceedings away from financial evidence

Judge Clifton Newman has sent the court into recess without resolution on the admission of evidence tied to Alex Murdaugh’s alleged financial crimes. Court will resume at 2:15 p.m.

After nearly two-and-a-half hours of testimony from Parker Law Group CFO Jeannie Seckinger, who presented extensive evidence alleging that Murdaugh had been siphoning funds from settlements owed to clients he represented, defense attorney Jim Griffin continued to argue the evidence was irrelevant to Murdaugh’s double-murder charge.

Murdaugh has not been convicted of any financial crimes he was charged with.

Additionally, Griffin argued, admission of the state’s numerous exhibits and witnesses to testify on Murdaugh’s supposed financial misdeeds could unduly extend the trial to “the end of February or to early March.”

Lead prosecutor Creighton Waters again insisted the context is necessary to establish the circumstances around Maggie and Paul Murdaugh’s murders, since the defense has pressed previous witnesses on whether they could think of any motive that could drive Murdaugh to allegedly kill his family.

Ultimately, Newman decided to redirect Thursday’s proceedings to focus on other aspects of the case in order to return the jury to the courtroom. Jurors have been absent since around 10:30 a.m., when Seckinger first took the stand.

Newman broke for lunch with an ultimatum regarding the admission of financial evidence.

“If you can’t (reach an agreement),” Newman told both parties, “then I’ll make the call.”

11:50 a.m. — Witness says Murdaugh stole millions as early as 2011

Records recovered during the Parker Law Group’s investigation of Alex Murdaugh’s financial crimes revealed Murdaugh allegedly pocketed money intended for clients since 2011, a prosecution explained to a jury-less courtroom Thursday.

Most of the thefts the firm uncovered took place around 2011 and 2012, Parker Law Group CFO Jeannie Seckinger testified. The law firm, where Murdaugh formerly worked, had to track down clients that didn’t receive payment after Murdaugh represented them and reimbursed them.

“(The money) went to a fake Forge account, where Alex stole money from the client,” Seckinger testified.

“Every last bit of it?” lead prosecutor Creighton Waters emphasized. “That client didn’t get one dime until y’all had to make it right?”

“Every last bit,” Seckinger confirmed.

Among the largest cuts Seckinger said Murdaugh kept was $1.3 million taken from the estate of Donna Badger, a South Carolina woman who died in a 2011 car crash.

Murdaugh received $1.24 million in legal fees for that case, Seckinger said.

11:15 a.m. — Law firm CFO confronted Alex about missing money

Jeannie Seckinger, CFO for Alex Murdaugh’s former law firm, said Thursday that she confronted Murdaugh in his office the morning of June 7, 2021 — the same day Murdaugh’s wife and son were murdered — about large sums of money missing from the firm’s accounting.

On May 27, 2021, Seckinger sent an email to one of Murdaugh’s paralegals requesting financial documents related to a case Murdaugh worked on with Chris Wilson, an attorney and longtime friend of Murdaugh’s.

Seckinger said the company had received an expenses check for the case, but never received a fees check from Murdaugh.

The missing fees were a staggering $792,000, and Seckinger testified she was originally concerned Murdaugh was attempting to “hide” the money from the legal fall out over the 2019 boat crash that killed Mallory Beach.

“That would’ve been wrong, and we didn’t want any part of that,” Seckinger said.

Murdaugh repeatedly assured Seckinger that Wilson’s office received the money, she said.

Seckinger testified she finally confronted Murdaugh on the morning of June 7, 2021.

“He turned to look at me when I came up (to his office) and said, ‘What do you need now,’ and gave me a very dirty look, not a look I’d ever received from Alex,” Seckinger testified. “We went into his office and closed the door, and I told him at that point I had reason to believe he’d received the funds himself, and I needed proof that he did not.”

During that conversation, Seckinger testified that Murdaugh again insisted Wilson’s office received the fees and he could get the money at any time. Before Seckinger could press for more, Murdaugh received a call about his father being moved into hospice care, she said.

When Seckinger took up the investigation again later that year, she said she looked at records of the law firm’s payments to Forge Consulting, a financial firm Murdaugh allegedly used in settling lawsuits related to Paul’s boat crash.

“As I did that, I started to print out all the documents that would relate to those disbursements,” Seckinger said. “As I started printing the canceled checks off, I could see Bank of America on the back of all of them, and Alex Murdaugh’s signature.”

When the partners later confronted Murdaugh in September 2021, he was forced to resign. Randy Murdaugh, Murdaugh’s brother, was one of the partners who reviewed the records of Murdaugh’s transactions.

When the law group continued digging, Seckinger said she noticed unusual payments to Palmetto State Bank. The money was apparently being held in trust for a beneficiary, but the checks were converted to be used by Murdaugh, she said.

Murdaugh was confronted about missing money the day of the murders. Will the jury hear it?

10:30 a.m. — Jury excused, law firm employee takes the stand

Judge Clifton Newman has excused the jury until around 1 p.m. as he mulls what specific financial problems of Alex Murdaugh’s can be revealed in front of the jury at his double-murder trial.

The state will make final arguments for allowing evidence pointing to Murdaugh’s financial situation as motive for his wife and son’s murders on June 7, 2021.

The state has called Jeannie Seckinger, the CFO of Parker Law Group, what was formerly known as PMPED.

Seckinger was a key witness in the November 2022 federal conviction of Russell Laffitte.

Seckinger had a lengthy professional relationship with Palmetto State Bank, where Laffitte worked as CEO. She was also the one who confronted Alex Murdaugh on the day of the murders about missing fees at the law firm.

10:15 a.m. — Snapchat employee takes the stand

Heidi Galore, an employee of Snapchat owner Snap, Inc., has been called as a state witness.

Prior to Paul Murdaugh’s death, around 7 p.m. on June 7, 2021, Paul sent his friends a Snapchat video of himself and his father, Alex Murdaugh, looking at a row of trees they’d planted at the family’s Moselle property.

10 a.m. — Judge says ‘door open’ for financial motive evidence

The use of Alex Murdaugh’s financial trouble as a motive for Paul and Maggie Murdaugh’s murder can be permitted at court, Judge Clifton Newman said Thursday.

The court will rule on the admissibility of specific evidence pointing to Alex Murdaugh’s financial crimes as the trial progresses, Newman said. He shared that in the court’s view, based on legal precedent, the evidence is valid as broader context to the circumstances of the murders.

Defense “opened the door” by asking witnesses about their knowledge of Paul Murdaugh’s 2019 boating accident and if they could think of any reason Alex Murdaugh would kill his wife and son.

“Evidence of other crimes or bad acts is necessary if it is an essential part of the crimes on trial, or where it furnishes part of the context of the crime, or is necessary to a full presentation of the case,” Newman said. “Or, is so intimately connected with and explanatory of the crime charged against the defendant ... that its proof is appropriate in order to complete the story of the crime on trial (and) to prove its immediate context.”

9:45 a.m. — Judge addresses ‘inappropriate’ defense objection

Judge Clifton Newman explained Thursday without the jury present why he overruled a defense objection late Wednesday that he described as “totally inappropriate.”

On Wednesday, the defense objected to lead prosecutor Creighton Waters’ questioning of Will Loving, a childhood friend of Paul’s, about his knowledge of Alex Murdaugh’s significant money troubles, which includes around $792,000 in missing fees owed to his former law firm.

“The witness was asked (by the defense) whether he could think of any reason possible why Mr. Murdaugh would commit the crimes he’s accused of committing,” Newman said. “That, in effect, turned the cross-examination of that witness from dealing with specific issues of the case to having that witness testify as a character witness.”

Newman said the door was opened for the prosecution to question the witness about their knowledge of Murdaugh’s alleged financial crimes as a motive.

“In addition to all of that, the objection was totally inappropriate, as the court laid out and reviewed with the parties early in the trial that objections should be made and the legal basis stated,” Newman said. “An objection, if totally inappropriate, in the words of (South Carolina) Judge Joe Anderson, is no objection at all.”

9:30 a.m. — Judge to rule on admission of financial troubles

Judge Clifton Newman left the jury with a rather large cliffhanger Wednesday, after lead prosecutor Creighton Waters peppered one of Paul Murdaugh’s friends about whether he was aware Alex Murdaugh was in dire financial straits when his wife and son were murdered.

Did Will Loving, a childhood friend of Paul’s, know where Murdaugh spent his money, Waters asked. Did he know where the money came from, what his bank account looked like and whether he knew about his financial debt? Finally, at the end of the questions, Waters asked Loving whether he was aware that Murdaugh was confronted by his former law firm the morning of the murders over some $792,000 in missing fees from his law firm.

“Do you have the facts on any of that?” Waters asked Loving.

“No sir, I do not,” Loving said.

Newman ended court and dismissed the jury. But told lawyers he will rule this morning over whether Murdaugh’s financial problems can be introduced to the jury, who already have been teased about it.

Meanwhile, on Wednesday, the jury heard testimony about a cellphone video captured on Paul’s phone that Paul’s friends say they heard three voices on the video: Paul’s, his mother Maggie’s and Murdaugh’s, who previously told police he didn’t see his family at the kennels the night of June 7, 2021.

Friends also testified about the family’s bond, about how much Murdaugh loved Maggie and especially Paul, who, they added, often left guns everywhere, including his truck.