The cellphone video that placed Alex Murdaugh at the kennels — what it revealed
June 7, 2021.
Someone calls 911 from Moselle, the family’s hunting estate in Colleton County, South Carolina.
The voice belongs to Alex Murdaugh, and he says he has found the bodies of his wife, Maggie, and his son, Paul, near the dog kennels.
Paul was 22. Maggie was 52.
They had been shot, killed with a rifle and a shotgun.
The call is frantic. The record of it is clear.
But there is another piece of the record, one that investigators would come to hold close.
Paul’s cellphone.
The phone survived the killings, and on it was video footage.
That footage, according to the record, placed Alex Murdaugh at the kennels at the time of the killings.
The time of the killings.
The time when Alex said he had been napping.
The video did not show everything. The exact content of the video beyond placing Alex at the scene is not detailed in the record.
What the record does establish is a contradiction: a father who said he was asleep, and a phone that said otherwise.
People online are examining the video now, frame by frame, audio track by audio track.
They want to know what exactly it shows.
They want to know what exactly it proves.
That would require evidence.
What the record holds is this: the video placed Alex Murdaugh at the kennels.
The alibi said he was not there.
One of those statements is on a cellphone.
The other was spoken into a 911 line.
THE 911 CALL AND THE BODIES
The 911 call came from Alex Murdaugh.
He told the dispatcher he had found his wife and son near the dog kennels on the family’s hunting estate in Colleton County, South Carolina.
The date was June 7, 2021.
Paul Murdaugh was 22.
Maggie Murdaugh was 52.
Both had been killed with a rifle and a shotgun.
Their bodies were discovered by Alex Murdaugh, Paul’s father and Maggie’s husband.
He said he found them near the kennels.
The exact time of the 911 call is not specified in the record.
What is documented is the call itself, and the claim he made in it.
Within days, the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division took over the investigation.
SLED’s agents began with the scene, the weapons, and the timeline.
They would later examine a cellphone video from Paul’s phone, but that evidence belongs to another part of this story.
The case drew national attention.
It was not because of the killings alone.
It was because of the family name.
The Murdaughs had been a legal dynasty in the region for generations, a name attached to prosecutors, judges, and law firms.
Now the patriarch was the one who made the discovery.
He was the one on the 911 line.
He was the one who said he had not been there when it happened.
The shock of that morning was immediate.
The questions about his account came just as fast.
THE EVIDENCE AGAINST ALEX
The cellphone video came from Paul’s own phone.
It placed Alex at the kennels at the time of the killings.
That contradicted what he had told investigators: that he had been napping, that he had not been there when it happened.
The footage did not show the shootings.
It showed Alex at the scene, in the minutes around the deaths.
The record does not specify the exact timeline of when the weapons were found in the river; that detail is not established.
The rifle and the shotgun were recovered from the water.
Curtis Edward Smith, a former client of Alex’s, testified that Alex had given him the weapons to dispose of.
Smith testified in court.
Smith said Alex asked him to shoot him in the head in September 2021.
That shooting, Smith said, was staged to create an alibi for financial crimes.
Alex’s clothing, recovered from his vehicle, contained gunshot residue.
The forensic findings accumulated.
The testimony accumulated.
The timeline of Alex’s own statement frayed at every point.
The investigation also revealed that Alex had been embezzling from his law firm and clients.
That gave prosecutors a motive: to distract from the fraud.
Not because the video alone proved the killings.
But because the video, the residue, the weapons, and the witness each placed a piece of the same story in the same place.
It is evidence.
It is also a weight that grows with each item the jury heard.
TWO STORIES, ONE JURY
The prosecution argued that Alex Murdaugh killed his wife and son to prevent them from discovering his financial crimes.
The defense argued that Alex was not present at the scene and that the evidence was circumstantial.
The defense's specific arguments beyond that are not detailed in the record.
The trial began in January 2023 in Colleton County, with Judge Clifton Newman presiding.
Prosecutor Creighton Waters walked the jury through the cellphone video, the gunshot residue, the weapons pulled from a river.
The defense pushed back on each piece.
It was not a video of a shooting.
It was a video of a man at the kennels at the time the state said the shooting happened.
Was the residue proof of a trigger pulled?
Was the river a hiding place or an accident?
That would require evidence, and the jury heard what it heard.
Curtis Edward Smith, a former client of Alex's, testified about helping dispose of evidence.
He testified that Alex gave him the weapons.
He testified that Alex asked him to shoot him in the head in September 2021, a staged attack meant to create an alibi.
The jury heard all of it.
On March 2, 2023, the jury found Alex Murdaugh guilty on all four counts: two counts of murder and two counts of possession of a weapon during a violent crime.
He was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences without parole.
The verdict did not turn on one clip.
It turned on the weight of the video, the residue, the weapons, and the witness, each placed in the same place at the same time.
It is a conviction.
It is also a story the defense still contests.
AND THE STORY STILL ISN'T OVER
He is serving two consecutive life sentences at a South Carolina prison.
No parole.
The appeals are ongoing, and the defense is seeking a new trial based on allegations of jury tampering by a court clerk.
The status of those allegations is not resolved in the record.
Neither is the outcome of the appeals.
That would require evidence.
In a separate case, he pleaded guilty to 22 federal charges related to financial fraud and money laundering in September 2023.
The judge added 40 years to his sentence.
The law firm that carried the Murdaugh name settled claims related to his fraud.
He was disbarred.
The family’s legal legacy is dismantled.
It is a legacy. It is also a caution.
The case opened broader investigations into the family’s history.
One thread is the unsolved death of a former housekeeper, Gloria Satterfield.
Her family received a settlement from Alex’s estate.
The record does not say who was responsible for her death.
Buster Murdaugh has largely stayed out of the public eye.
He was not charged in the killings.
The video placed Alex at the kennels.
The residue placed him in his clothes.
The weapons placed him in the river.
The witness placed him in the story.
The conviction rests on all of it.
The defense contests it still.
The story isn't over.
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