The defendant asserted that he left his wife and son by the kennels immediately after Paul shot his Snapchat video, which ended at 8:45 p.m. Asked if he could have left as late as 8:47 p.m., Murdaugh said it was possible, but he thinks it was sooner and he was back at the house by 8:49 p.m.
(The prosecution has alleged that Maggie and Paul were killed at around 8:49 p.m., after which, investigators say, active use of their phones ceased. A SLED cell phone expert testified Jan. 31 that data suggested someone held Maggie’s phone, which was found lying beside the road more than a quarter-mile away from the house, at 8:54 p.m. and again at 9:06 p.m., but didn’t unlock it. The phone showed five missed calls from her husband between 9:04 p.m. and 10:03 p.m.)
Murdaugh’s Suburban data indicated he left for his mother’s house in Armeda at 9:02 p.m. Asked if he heard “anything at all” before he drove away, Murdaugh said he did not.
Waters referred to Murdaugh’s previous statement to an investigator that he thought he heard Maggie and Paul driving up to the main house as he was leaving, adding, “You’re saying you couldn’t hear Blackout shots, supposedly, but you could hear that.”
Waters again questioned just how cooperative Murdaugh really was with investigators.
“Other then lying to them about going to the kennel, I was cooperative in every aspect of this investigation,” the defendant said.
To which the prosecutor responded, “Very cooperative, except for maybe the most important fact of all, that you were at the murder scene with the victims just minutes before they died.”
Waters played a video of Murdaugh being interviewed by investigators on June 8, 2021, during which he said that he had been at the house while his wife was at the kennels. Asked when it was that he decided to lie, Murdaugh said that not mentioning that he, too, was at the kennels with Maggie and Paul was not a conscious lie. He reiterated his previous explanation, that drug abuse had made him paranoid and he didn’t trust SLED.