The judge in the Alex Murdaugh murder trial is expected to rule this morning about whether the jury can hear evidence about the botched ‘hitman suicide plot’ orchestrated by the disgraced legal scion following the murders of his wife and son.
Murdaugh allegedly hired his cousin, Curtis ‘Eddie’ Smith, to shoot him in order to gain a $10 million life insurance payment for his surviving son Buster.
The State is set to rest its case this week but Smith has yet to testify. Smith is accused of shooting Murdaugh, 54, in the head three months after his wife Maggie and son Paul were ‘executed’.
But the story quickly unraveled and Murdaugh confessed to police that he had paid Smith to shoot him for an insurance payout.
The ruling on whether evidence in the roadside shooting is admissible at trial could pave the way for highly-anticipated testimony from Smith – though the prosecution is yet to confirm if they would call him to the stand.
Murdaugh allegedly hired his cousin, Curtis ‘Eddie’ Smith, to shoot him in order to gain a $10m life insurance payment for his surviving son Buster
This photo provided by the Colleton County sheriff’s office shows Curtis Edward Smith. He was charged with assisted suicide, insurance fraud and several other counts
Murdaugh and Smith face a separate prosecution over the life insurance scam which was allegedly designed to furnish his surviving son Buster with $11million.
Smith denies participating in the scheme and instead claims he tried to stop a suicidal Murdaugh from trying to shoot himself.
The botched plot was brought up in court again on Tuesday during testimony from Maggie Murdaugh’s sister Marian Proctor.
Proctor wept on the stand as she recalled how Alex told her whoever shot his wife and son ‘had thought about it for a really long time.’
Proctor told the court she found it ‘odd’ that Alex did not seem worried that the killers could still be out there – but appeared more concerned with clearing his son’s name in relation to a fatal boat crash in which he was drunk driving.
Proctor said she did not talk to Alex much in the aftermath because he was ‘just really busy. The whole town was coming to see him. He was very, very, very torn up.’
Later she asked if he had any idea who had shot Maggie, 52, and Paul, 22, dead at the family’s hunting estate. ‘We’ve got to find them,’ she recalled saying.
Alex told Proctor he had no idea who killed the pair but added, ‘whoever did had thought about it for a really long time.’ Proctor said she asked Alex if Maggie had suffered and he assured her that she had not.
‘Now I’m not sure that that’s true,’ Proctor told the court.
Marian Proctor told the court Tuesday that Murdaugh did not seem scared that the murderers could still be out there and seemed more intent on ‘clearing his son’s name’ following a drunken boat crash two years before.
The State says Murdaugh shot Maggie and Paul dead at the family’s sprawling hunting estate in South Carolina’s Lowcountry on the night of June 7, 2021.
Prosecutors say he killed the pair to distract from his financial crimes which included stealing millions from his law firm. He was also facing a ruinous civil suit over his son’s drunken boat wreck in February 2019 which killed 19-year-old Mallory Beach.
The defense theory is that somebody else killed Maggie and Paul in revenge for the boat crash. They say it is inconceivable that a ‘loving’ husband and father would so brutally murder his wife and son.
Maggie’s older sister Proctor, 59, told jurors she and Alex ‘never talked about finding the person who could have done it’.
Proctor felt that this was ‘odd’ because the rest of the family was terrified that whoever killed Maggie and Paul was still out there.
‘We were living in fear because we thought this horrible person was living out there we were mostly afraid for Alex and Buster,’ Proctor said.
Alex Murdaugh pictured with his wife Maggie and their two sons Paul (right) and Buster
She said they believed that it ‘probably had something to do with the boat case and we thought that until September and then things started to change a little bit.’
Proctor appeared to be about to suggest that she changed her mind after Alex was shot in the head in September – three months after Maggie and Paul’s murders.
But she was swiftly cut off as the defense raised a hearsay objection and the jury were sent out.
Murdaugh allegedly hired his cousin, Curtis ‘Eddie’ Smith, to shoot him in order to gain a $10m life insurance payment for his surviving son Buster.
In the absence of the jury, Proctor said she had been driving with her husband Bart Proctor when he received a phone call from a friend offering his condolences because Alex had been shot.
‘We literally stopped the car and pulled over on the side of the road. I thought whoever had killed Maggie and Paul had now shot Alex and I was horrified Buster was next,’ Proctor said.
Maggie’s sister said they then phoned Buster who confirmed Alex had been shot but that ‘he was okay.’
Proctor said they then had a conversation with Alex’s attorney Jim Griffin, who is also one of his trial lawyers. Griffin confirmed Alex had been shot and that he had recently been fired from his law firm because he had been caught stealing.
In addition to the botched insurance scam, which the jury has not heard, the State asked the judge to rule on whether they could ask Proctor about an alleged affair Alex had with an old college friend and his opioid addiction.
Judge Clifton Newman invited questions to Proctor so that he could understand what the prosecution wanted the jury to hear and what the defense objected to.
