WALTERBORO, S.C. — Jurors on Thursday heard directly from Alex Murdaugh on the night his wife and son were shot, via law enforcement body camera footage from the first responders who arrived at the scene of the murders the night of June 7, 2021.

It was the first day of witness testimony in the hotly anticipated murder trial in Walterboro, and the first time jurors saw footage of the scene for themselves.

Sgt. Daniel Greene with the Colleton County Sheriff’s Office was one of the first responders to the scene at 10:26 p.m. the night Paul and Maggie Murdaugh were killed, where Greene described finding the bodies and a clearly upset Murdaugh.

Greene described finding Maggie and Paul each lying in a “pool of blood” near the rural property’s dog kennels. He said Murdaugh, the only other person on the property, was upset, although at prosecutor Creighton Waters’ prompting, Greene said he did not see Murdaugh crying tears at the time.

At times during Greene’s testimony, Murdaugh could be seen weeping at the defense table, and his attorneys periodically covered displays of the crime scene photos in front of him.

Greene said that upon walking up to the scene, Murdaugh “immediately started talking about an incident his son was involved in with a boating accident,” which Greene had not yet asked him about.

Paul in 2019 was on a boat that crashed in Colleton County waters, in which friend Mallory Beach was killed. The case was the subject of a lawsuit and criminal charges against Paul, and many initially speculated the incident may have had something to do with the murders.

Greene took into deputies’ possession a shotgun Murdaugh said he had grabbed when he found the bodies. Jurors saw images of that shotgun and saw Greene’s body camera footage from the scene. Although the audio could be heard by the public in the courtroom, no images could be seen.

An audibly upset Murdaugh on the tape told the deputy that Paul had received threats over the boat crash, and had been “hit and punched” previously. Murdaugh told the deputy, on the night of June 7, 2021, that he had gone to see his mother, who has Alzheimer’s, and asked the deputy if Paul and Maggie were hurt. The deputy confirmed that they were dead.

“Any reasonable person who came upon those bodies would have come to the conclusion they were deceased,” Greene told the court Thursday.

...continued

©2023 The State. Visit at thestate.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.