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Jurors Reveal Key Moments That Convinced Them Of Alex Murdaugh's Guilt
For several jurors, the Snapchat video taken by Paul Murdaugh showing his father Alex present at the scene shortly before the murders was the tipping point. They were also skeptical of Alex Murdaugh's own testimony.
A Snapchat video featuring Alex Murdaugh's voice taken minutes before the estimated time of his wife and son's brutal killing, along with the disgraced legal scion's testimony on the stand, convinced one juror of his guilt.
Murdaugh was convicted Thursday of murdering his son Paul, 22, and his wife Maggie, 52, back in June 2021. On Friday, he was sentenced to life in prison without parole, though his attorneys have said they plan to appeal.
Juror Craig Moyer told The New York Post on Sunday that the video, shot by Paul in the dog kennels on the family's Colleton County hunting property, was the evidence that swayed him most toward a guilty verdict.
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“The dog kennel video, I mean it happened right before they were phoneless,” Moyer told the outlet, referencing the fact the victims phones showed no activity soon after the moment in question, leading investigators to conclude that was approximately the time they were killed.
Three distinctive voices – which prosecutors said belonged to Paul, Maggie and Murdaugh – can be heard in the Snapchat video, taken at approximately 8:44pm on June 7, 2021. Murdaugh called 911 reporting that his wife and son had been shot dead at 10:07 p.m. that evening.
When he took the stand in his own murder trial on Feb. 24, Murdaugh admitted that he had indeed been at the kennels when the video was taken, admitting to lying to authorities for around 20 months about that fact, though he denied killing his family members.
"When he took the stand, he kind of showed his guilt then," Moyer said.
"His head [was] shaking all the time and no tears, and he wiped his nose like this," the juror said, pantomiming the motion for the Post reporter. "Him crying and shaking his head back and forth and him admitting that he was there [at the dog kennels] a year and a half later."
Another juror who sat through the six-week trial, Gwen Generette, also cited the video as a tipping point for the jury in a TV interview with NBC's TODAY.
"It probably would have been a hung jury if it had not been for that video. It was like [Paul] spoke from the grave," Generette said of Paul.
"The kennel video, that just kind of sealed the deal," she said.
Generette agreed with Moyer that Murdaugh's crying in court seemed insincere: "He turned it off and on – it wasn't genuine."
Juror James McDowell also cited the video in the TODAY feature, asking "if [Murdaugh] didn't do it, how did he know what time to lie about being there?"
"The kennel video, it was something he had lied about," McDowell said.
The two jurors, along with juror Amie Williams, all told TODAY that they felt it was a mistake for Murdaugh to take the stand.
Moyer told the Post that at first, two jurors weren't convinced of Murdaugh's guilt.
“It was kind of loud, everybody talking over each other, but we got it done,” he said.
One of the twelve jurors was dismissed after she was caught discussing the case outside the courtroom. When Colleton County Court Judge Clifton Newman asked if she needed to retrieve any personal effects on the property, she sent the courtroom into uproarious laughter when she replied "a dozen eggs."
"I thought it was kind of weird about the eggs," Moyer told the Post on Sunday reporter. "Everybody's talking about the eggs. I think another juror brought them in and gave them to her - they were farm eggs."
Murdaugh is still awaiting trial for nearly 100 other charges related to his alleged theft of money from his law firm and clients.
You can watch the Oxygen special "Alex Murdaugh. Death. Deception. Power." here or on Peacock.
