The last video Paul Murdaugh filmed minutes before the shots that killed him and his mother
He was 22, and he was filming his dogs.
Paul Murdaugh held up his cell phone at the family's hunting estate in Colleton County, South Carolina, on June 7, 2021.
The clip, later shown at trial, caught his father's voice and his father's figure at the dog kennels.
The same kennels where Paul and his mother, Maggie, 52, were found shot to death.
Shot twice with a shotgun, Paul.
Shot multiple times with a rifle, Maggie.
The video placed Alex Murdaugh at the scene moments before the violence.
It contradicted his initial alibi, the one he gave investigators: that he had been napping.
He was not napping, the recording suggested.
He was there.
The clip is documented evidence, not a theory circulating online.
It was played in a courtroom, frame by frame, for a jury.
The exact time the video was recorded relative to the shooting is not established in the source.
Not the minute, not the second.
That remains open.
What the record does establish is the proximity.
A victim's own camera captured the accused in the place where the victim would die.
It is a piece of the timeline.
It is also a piece of the family's last ordinary hour.
Paul was filming the dogs.
His father was there.
His mother was somewhere near.
Three people at a hunting estate in the Lowcountry.
One of them recorded the moment.
Two of them never left.
THE 911 CALL
He called 911.
Alex Murdaugh told the dispatcher he had found the bodies of his wife and son near the dog kennels on the family’s hunting estate in Colleton County, South Carolina.
The exact content of that call is not provided in the source.
Paul Murdaugh, 22, had been shot twice with a shotgun.
Maggie Murdaugh, 52, had been shot multiple times with a rifle.
The two of them were on the ground by the kennels, where Paul had filmed his father moments earlier.
SLED agents initially treated the deaths as a double homicide with no clear motive.
No clear motive, and no obvious suspect.
The case drew national attention anyway.
Not because of what was found at the kennels.
Because of the name on the property.
The Murdaughs were a legal dynasty in the Lowcountry, a family whose name carried weight in courtrooms and courthouses across the region.
Alex Murdaugh was a prominent personal injury attorney, heir to that power.
His wife was dead.
His younger son was dead.
He was the one who said he found them.
SLED agents had questions, but they had no answers.
They treated the scene as a double homicide.
They collected what evidence they could.
They noted the shotgun wounds and the rifle wounds.
They noted the video on Paul’s phone, the one that placed Alex at the kennels.
They did not arrest anyone that night.
The case would go unsolved for over a year.
The shock of discovery settled over the estate, over the family, over a region that knew the Murdaugh name.
It was a double homicide.
It was also the beginning of a very public fall.
A YEAR OF SECRETS
The case remained unsolved for over a year.
Alex Murdaugh was publicly suspected. He was not charged.
Then, in September 2021, he was shot in the head.
It looked like a roadside attack. It was not.
He later admitted it was a suicide-for-hire scheme.
Curtis Edward Smith, a former client, was charged with helping him stage it.
The alleged plan: Alex would die, and Buster Murdaugh would collect a life insurance payout.
That admission cracked the facade.
Investigators began looking at his finances.
They found he had allegedly stolen millions from clients and his law firm.
The specific financial crimes are not detailed in the record. The scale is.
A powerful man was unraveling in public.
In July 2022, Alex Murdaugh was indicted for the murders of Maggie and Paul.
Not for the money. For the deaths.
The family's name had shielded him for a year. It could not shield him anymore.
What had been whispered became formal. What had been a secret became a charge.
The fall was not sudden. It was slow, and it was documented.
Each revelation pulled at another thread.
The insurance scheme. The missing money. The indictment.
The facade did not crumble all at once. It was dismantled, piece by piece, by investigators.
And still, the question hung over everything: what had happened at the kennels.
THE TRIAL
The trial opened in Colleton County in January 2023.
Alex Murdaugh sat charged with two counts of murder and two counts of possession of a weapon during a violent crime.
The prosecution called more than 70 witnesses over six weeks.
SLED agents testified about gunshot residue and ballistic evidence.
No murder weapon was ever recovered.
The cell phone video went to the jury.
It showed Paul at the kennels, moments before the shots.
It placed Alex there, contradicting his claim that he had been napping.
Alex took the stand in his own defense.
He admitted he had lied about his whereabouts.
He denied the murders.
He said he had been paranoid and ashamed, and that the lies had spun out of control.
Not because the evidence was thin.
Because he had been caught in them.
The housekeeper’s specific testimony was not described in the record.
The jury deliberated for less than three hours.
On March 2, 2023, the verdict came back.
Guilty on all four counts.
Judge Clifton Newman sentenced him to two consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole.
Alex stood and said nothing.
The defense filed motions for a new trial, alleging jury tampering.
The motions were denied.
The facade was gone.
The verdict was final.
And the question that had hung over everything — what had happened at the kennels — had been answered by twelve people in a courtroom in Colleton County.
AND THE STORY STILL ISN'T OVER
Alex Murdaugh is serving his life sentences at a South Carolina state prison as of 2024.
His appeals are ongoing.
His defense team continues to argue that the jury was improperly influenced.
That argument was denied at trial.
It is being tried again on appeal.
The outcome of the appeals is not known.
That would require a decision that has not come.
Buster Murdaugh has remained out of the public eye.
He has spoken publicly about his grief.
He has spoken publicly about his belief in his father's guilt.
Not because the verdict was easy. Because he was there, in the courtroom, when the video played.
The civil lawsuits are pending.
Numerous of them, all against Alex, all for financial fraud.
They will outlast the criminal case, probably.
They will parse the money the way the trial parsed the minutes.
The documentaries have been made.
The books have been written.
No journalist or author has been formally part of the legal proceedings.
They watched from the gallery like everyone else.
They reconstructed what they could.
What they could not reconstruct remains in the record, in the testimony, in the exhibits.
The shotgun was never recovered.
The rifle was never recovered.
The last video Paul Murdaugh filmed was shown to the jury.
It placed his father at the kennels.
It placed him there moments before the shots.
Alex said he was napping.
The twelve people in Colleton County said otherwise.
The story is not over because the appeals are not over.
The story is not over because the money is not accounted for.
The story is not over because a son is left to carry what his father did.
Buster has said he believes his father is guilty.
He has said it publicly.
That is what the record shows.
That is what remains.
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