Prosecutor has painted a very devastating picture of guilt against Alex Murdaugh: Phil Holloway
Criminal defense attorney Phil Holloway gives legal insight into the Alex Murdaugh double murder trial following the 2021 murders of Maggie and Paul Murdaugh in Islandton, S.C., on 'America Reports.'
Disbarred South Carolina attorney Alex Murdaugh admitted to a bizarre botched suicide plot in a recorded interview with police about three months after his wife and son were gunned down at the family's hunting estate.
Murdaugh's attorneys arranged the phone interview on Sept. 13, 2021, while he was in a drug rehab facility for an opioid addiction.
He came clean to South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) agent Ryan Kelly, admitting he'd asked his former client and his alleged drug dealer, Curtis "Cousin Eddie" Smith, to shoot him in the head nine days earlier.
The suicide was meant to look like a murder so his living son, Buster Murdaugh, could collect a $10 million life insurance payout, Murdaugh told Kelly in the recording played for jurors Thursday.
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Alex Murdaugh is led out of Colleton County Court in Walterboro, S.C., on Feb. 7, 2023. (Mark Sims for Fox News Digital)
But Smith only grazed Murdaugh's head.
"I knew I was about to lose everything and I figured [Buster's] better off that way than dealing with me," Murdaugh said in a trembling voice as his lawyers, Jim Griffin and Dick Harpootlian, occasionally chimed in on the call.
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"I apologize to you for lying," Murdaugh told Kelly. "I was in a very bad place."
Murdaugh hadn't yet been arrested for the double slaying of his 22-year-old son, Paul Murdaugh, and his wife, Maggie Murdaugh, 52, in June 2021, for which he is currently on trial in Walterboro, South Carolina.
Curtis 'Cousin Eddie' Smith's booking photo (left) and a sketch artist's composite based on Alex Murdaugh's description of the assailant who shot him in the head on Sept. 4, 2021. (Colleton County Sheriff's Office/ South Carolina Attorney General's Office)
Jurors weren't supposed to hear about the bungled attempted murder, but Judge Clifton Newman reversed his earlier ruling barring the testimony after Griffin repeatedly brought up Smith on Wednesday during cross-examination.
Griffin suggested that Smith could be behind the murders of Maggie and Paul.
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The defense chose "to just go right there as if they could dance through fire without getting burned," said Newman, who blamed Griffin for opening the door to Kelly's testimony.
In the confession, Murdaugh admitted to paying Smith up to $50,000 a week for pills and embezzling millions from his law firm to fuel his addiction.
Curtis "Cousin Eddie" Smith's truck, left, and Alex Murdaugh driving his wife's Mercedes on Old Salkehatchie Road minutes before Murdaugh claimed an unknown assailant shot him in the head on Sept. 4, 2021.
The day before the failed Sept. 4, 2021, suicide, Murdaugh was fired for stealing from his law firm, then known as Peters Murdaugh, Parker, Eltzroth & Detrick.
He approached Smith with the half-baked plan. "I told him things were getting ready to get really bad and I’d be better off not here, and I asked him to shoot me," Murdaugh said in the interview, insisting that Smith agreed to kill him as a favor. "At first he was a little surprised, but then he said OK."
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Murdaugh only confessed after his far-fetched tale of a dapper stranger opening fire when he stopped to change a flat tire quickly unraveled.
He even provided a detailed description of the "nice looking" assailant to a sketch artist.
Buster Murdaugh arrives at the Colleton County Courthouse in Walterboro, S.C., on Friday. (Mark Sims for Fox News Digital)
Agents recovered a knife from the scene on the side of Old Salkehachie Road, a short drive from the family's hunting estate, known as Moselle, where Paul and Maggie were murdered.
Murdaugh was driving Maggie’s black Mercedes and used the knife to puncture the tire.
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But the Mercedes had run-flat tires, which keep a car operable even with a puncture. Both Murdaugh and Smith’s DNA were recovered from the knife, Kelly testified.
Video surveillance from a nearby church showed a blue Chevrolet pickup with a gold quarter panel, which belonged to Smith, following behind Murdaugh in the Mercedes.
Minutes later, the pickup could be seen driving the opposite direction after the shooting.
From left: Buster, Maggie, Paul and Alex Murdaugh in an undated photo. (Facebook)
Harpootlian informed Kelly on the call that Murdaugh’s life insurance policy didn’t actually have a suicide clause that would prevent Buster from collecting the payout — but that his client didn’t realize this at the time.
After lead prosecutor Creighton Waters played the phone interview, he peppered Kelly with a few final questions.
"Did [Alex Murdaugh] ever say Curtis Eddie Smith had anything to do with the murders at Moselle?" asked Waters.
"He denied it when we asked," Kelly replied. Murdaugh also said he had no outstanding debts for drugs, and that Buster was not in danger.
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Smith and Murdaugh were indicted in June 2022 on criminal conspiracy and narcotics charges for an alleged drug trafficking conspiracy.
The defense’s cross-examination of Kelly is expected to begin Friday at 9:30 a.m.
