The cellphone video that placed Alex Murdaugh at the kennels — and shattered his alibi

The video ran for about a minute.

Paul Murdaugh recorded it at the dog kennels on the family property, on the evening the killings are believed to have happened.

The camera moved across the pens, catching the dogs, catching the light.

Then it caught something else.

A voice, familiar to anyone who knew the family.

The voice belonged to Alex Murdaugh.

Prosecutors presented the video at trial, and the courtroom went quiet.

He had told investigators he was not at the kennels that night.

He had told them he had left the property before the shootings, that he had driven to visit his mother.

The video placed him there.

Not in the house. Not on the road.

At the kennels, with his son, at the time in question.

The state called it circumstantial evidence.

Circumstantial, they argued, because it did not show a shooting.

Circumstantial, they argued, because it did not show a motive.

But it did something else.

It put Alex Murdaugh where he said he was not.

It gave the jury a reason to ask what else he had hidden.

What exactly does the video show?

That is where the record stops.

The source does not detail the full content of the footage beyond placing Alex at the kennels.

The defense argued the video proved nothing on its own.

No gun. No struggle. No confession.

Just a father’s voice, recorded by a son who would be dead within hours.

The exact content of the video beyond placing Alex at the kennels is not detailed in the source.

That would require evidence.

THE 911 CALL AND THE ALIBI

On June 7, 2021, Paul Murdaugh and his mother, Maggie Murdaugh, were found shot to death at the family’s hunting estate in Colleton County, South Carolina.

Alex Murdaugh discovered the bodies and called 911 that evening.

He claimed he had been at the property but left before the shootings, visiting his mother and then returning to find the bodies.

That was his story: a father who drove away, came back, and found his wife and son dead.

The exact timeline of Alex’s movements that evening is not fully established in the source.

Investigators found no signs of a struggle or robbery.

No forced entry. No ransacked rooms. No clear motive for a stranger.

The murders were initially treated as an unsolved double homicide.

A shotgun and a rifle, both owned by the Murdaugh family, were used in the killings.

Paul was 22. Maggie was 52.

The case drew national attention because of the Murdaugh family’s legal and political prominence in the region.

Alex Murdaugh was a former attorney, the husband and father of the victims.

He was charged with two counts of murder and two counts of possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime.

But at that moment, in June 2021, there was only a grieving man on the phone with a dispatcher.

His alibi depended on a simple sequence: leave, visit his mother, return, find the bodies.

That sequence would hold for months.

Not because it was verified.

But because there was no evidence to break it.