Since then, prosecutors have charged Mr. Murdaugh with stealing a total of about $8.8 million. He was sworn to confess to many of those crimes, including embezzling about $3.7 million in 2019. It was also the same year that his son, Paul, was charged with drunkenly crashing his boat into a bridge, killed one of his passengers, 19-year-old Mallory. Beach.
Mr Murdaugh still maintains that he believes his son was killed by an assailant or by unidentified attackers in connection with that crash.
The prosecution relied on Murdaugh’s lies to convince the jury not to trust him.
Along with a series of financial wrongdoings, Mr. Murdaugh testified that he had long been addicted to painkillers and had a tendency to lie. The prosecution captured that admission – about how easily and easily he lied to the police, his family and friends – to convince the jury that he lied about not killing his wife and son.
At one point, the lead prosecutor, Creighton Waters, held up a stack of papers relating to clients Mr. Murdaugh had stolen.
“Each of these, you have to sit down and look someone in the eye and convince them that you are on their side, when you are not, right?” he asked Mr. killing, while looking directly at the jury.
Mr Murdaugh replied: “What I admit is that I misled them, I did it wrong and I stole their money.
In return, Mr. Murdaugh’s lawyers portrayed his admission to his lies as a willingness to come clean, saying he recognized his flaws, but was never violent and would never. now commit murders.
Surviving relatives are among Murdaugh’s most fervent defenders – to a degree.
Friends and relatives said Mr Murdaugh was devastated by the murder. His brother, John Marvin Murdaugh, testified that he “would have to come up with a new word to describe how distraught he was.”
