The cellphone video that caught Alex Murdaugh's voice at the kennels — after he said he wasn't there

The 911 call came at 10:06 p.m. on June 7, 2021.

Alex Murdaugh told the dispatcher he had just found his wife and son near the dog kennels on the family's hunting estate in Colleton County, South Carolina.

Paul was 22. Maggie was 52.

They had been shot, a rifle and a shotgun.

The remote property had no eyewitnesses.

For days, the story held.

Then investigators found a cellphone video recorded by Paul shortly before the killings.

The video captured Alex's voice.

Alex's voice at the kennels.

Alex's voice at the time he said he had been elsewhere.

The exact content of that video beyond his voice is not in the record.

What the record does show is the contradiction: the accused man's own words, on his dead son's phone, placing him where he said he was not.

That was the turning point.

Not because of a confession. Because of a voice.

The investigation had initially accepted Alex's alibi, a significant mistake that delayed his arrest.

SLED agents went back through the family's finances and personal disputes.

They found the weapons.

They found the voice.

The man who called 911 to report the bodies had told a story that the dead boy's phone could not support.

It was a jolt of contradiction.

One man's word against a recording.

The recording did not say why. It only said where.

THE 911 CALL AND THE FIRST MISTAKE

He called 911 and said he had found them near the dog kennels.

The bodies of his wife, Maggie, and his son, Paul, were on the ground at the family’s hunting estate in Colleton County.

The exact words of that call are not in the record.

His tone, his pauses, his first sentences — none of that is established.

What is established is that the call came after the discovery, and that his story placed him away from the scene at the moment of the killings.

The investigation began with that version of events.

The remote location meant no eyewitnesses came forward.

The kennels sat on a large, private property; the shots were heard by no one who would testify.

SLED agents took the alibi at face value.

Not because they were careless. Because the man who gave it was a Murdaugh.

The family name carried weight in the region’s courts for generations.

Alex Murdaugh was a former personal injury attorney, a scion of that legal dynasty.

His word, for a time, was enough.

That acceptance was the first mistake.

It cost nearly a year before he was charged in July 2022.

Two people were dead, and the investigation spent months treating the grieving husband and father as a witness.

The case drew national attention because of the family’s prominence.

Reporters circled the estate; cameras watched the courthouse steps.