Who ‘did him so bad’ in Paul Murdaugh’s murder? Defense, witness dispute what Alex said

What did Alex Murdaugh say when describing his murdered son.

When an interview with law enforcement a day after his 22-year-old son Paul and 52-year-old wife Maggie were shot to death on the family’s Colleton County property, an emotional Murdaugh broke down and said something through the sobs.

Prosecution witness Jeff Croft, a State Law Enforcement Division senior special agent who conducted the interview, testified on the stand Monday that Murdaugh said of Paul, “I did him so bad.” Murdaugh’s defense team made the case that the disbarred former attorney on trial for murder at the Colleton County Courthouse actually said, “they did him so bad.”

Defense attorney Jim Griffin replayed the tape of the interview at normal speed and then slowed down the audio to emphasize that Murdaugh was talking about someone else. But Croft stuck by his testimony of what the interview said.

“I’m 100% confident in what I heard and what I interpreted him to say,” Croft said Tuesday.

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If the SLED agent believed Murdaugh had essentially confessed at the time, why did Croft not follow up on it either in that interview or in a subsequent interview with Murdaugh in August, Griffin asked. Croft responded that he made a “mental note” of the statement for later follow-up.

“We were early in the investigation and this was more information gathering from Mr. Alex,” Croft said.

Griffin started the seventh day of Murdaugh’s murder trial going on the offensive about the gun evidence introduced the day before. The state introduced several firearms that were seized from the “gun room” of the Murdaughs’ Colleton County estate, including a .12-gauge shotgun and AR-style rifle similar to those that killed Paul and Maggie on the evening of June 7, 2021.

Griffin repeatedly objected Monday to the guns being entered into evidence as none of them had been conclusively linked to the murders of the disbarred Hampton County attorney’s wife and son. He emphasized that fact Tuesday in his cross-examination with Croft, who collected evidence from the family’s Moselle property.

“In fact, none of the shotguns you brought yesterday, according to your lab analysis, fired the bullets that killed Paul,” Griffin said.

Paul was killed by a shotgun blast in the family’s dog kennels, while Maggie was shot by an AR-style rifle outside the kennels. But despite all the weapons that were removed from the Murdaugh home at the time, murder charges were ultimately brought against Murdaugh without the murder weapons being recovered.

“Have you ever found the murder weapons to your knowledge?” Griffin asked Croft in court Tuesday.

“Not that I’m aware of, sir,” Croft said.

Murdaugh bought the gun used in wife’s murder?

Lead prosecutor Creighton Waters has said the state’s analysis of other discharged cartridges found on the property found similar markings to those on the .300 blackout cartridges found near Maggie’s body. The state believes those rounds were fired by a gun previously purchased by Murdaugh that is now missing, although prosecutors have not yet presented evidence on the connection.

Croft testified Monday to the interview with Murdaugh conducted just days after the killings in June 2021. At the time, Murdaugh told investigators the last time he saw Paul and Maggie was when the three of them ate dinner together at the Moselle property. Murdaugh then said he took a nap before driving to the home of his mother, who suffers from Alzheimer’s, by which point his wife and son had already been shot and killed by the dog kennels 1,000 yards behind the house.

But Waters said in his opening argument that the state has cellphone evidence that Murdaugh moved toward the dog kennels around 8:30 p.m. the night of the murders, and that Paul sent a video from the dog kennels that night in which his mother and father can be heard speaking in the background — minutes before the murders are believed to have occurred.

Reporters Ted Clifford and John Monk contributed to this report.

This is a developing story. It will be updated.