Alex Murdaugh’s defense today claimed he could not have fired the shots that killed Maggie because he is too tall.
The defense called Mike Sutton, a crime scene expert, who presented a 3D reconstruction with models of a shooter between 5ft2in and 5ft4in tall holding a rifle.
Sutton testified that the trajectory of bullets which hit the quail pen and the dog house close to where Maggie’s body was found meant that the shooter likely fired from the hip.
He testified that if Alex – who stands at 6ft4in – were to have made the shot his ‘shooting hand would have below below his knee cap.’
The expert said it ‘makes it very unlikely that a tall person made the shots … In my opinion it’s very unlikely [Alex] fired.’
The defense called Mike Sutton, a crime scene expert, who presented a 3D reconstruction with models of shooter between 5ft2in and 5ft4in tall holding a rifle. He testified about the trajectories of bullets which struck a quail pen under the lean to and the doghouse near where Maggie’s body was found
The defense presented pictures showing Alex standing at 6ft4in, one taken in jail and the other in the courtroom last week
Buster, Maggie, Paul and Alex. The disgraced legal scion is accused of shooting dead his wife and son at the family’s hunting lodge at Moselle on the night of June 7, 2021
Sutton told the court he measured Alex, known by his family as ‘Big Red, this morning and his kneecap was 25 inches off the ground.
The expert said: ‘It puts them in an unrealistic shooting position. It’s not an aiming position. It’s not a shooting position. It would be something other than a shooting position where you were on your feet.’
‘You would have to be bending over and have your shooting hand down at or below your kneecap. It just makes it very unlikely that a tall person made that shot,’ he added.
The court heard earlier from Buster Murdaugh who testified that his father is 6ft4in.
The 26-year-old took the stand to describe how his father had phoned him on the night of the murders on June 7, 2021.
Alex, 54, asked his son if he ‘was sitting down’. ‘He sounded odd and he told me that my mom and my brother had been shot,’ Buster testified.
He also revealed that he and his father took a vacation to Lake Keowee with Maggie’s parents, his uncle and aunt and their children ten days after the murders.
Buster was asked about his father’s second interview with police, telling jurors Alex said, ‘they did him so bad,’ when referring to Paul. The statement has been hotly contested in the trial, with the State alleging Alex admitted: ‘I did him so bad.’
The defense witnesses are expected to last a week and then there will be closing arguments from the opposing legal sides before jurors are sent to reach a verdict.
Crime scene expert Sutton told jurors the bullets which struck the quail pen and the doghouse came from different directions. The former was fired from the right, while the latter came from the left.
Buster, 26, stated his full name, Richard Alexander Murdaugh Jr., as father Alex, 54, looked on smiling. He was supported in court by his girlfriend Brooklynn White
Buster arrives at the Colleton County court in Walterboro Tuesday with his girlfriend Brooklynn White who has supported him most days
He showed jurors a computer visualization with green lines to show the flight path of the bullets.
The expert said the quail pen bullet was fired upward, while the one which struck the doghouse was fired downward.
The defense had previously suggested that Paul and Maggie were killed by two different shooters.
Maggie was killed with five rounds from a .300 Blackout assault rifle, while Paul was shot twice with a 12-gauge shotgun.
Neither murder weapon has ever been recovered, however the State argues that Alex used ‘family weapons’ to kill Maggie and Paul.
Maggie’s body lies close to the doghouse by the lean to which stands adjacent to the kennels at the hunting property at Moselle in South Carolina
The dog house (left) and the quail pen (up against the wooden wall) at the kennels of the hunting estate at Moselle
Maggie’s blood-soaked body was found just a few yards away from the doghoure
Sutton was hired by the defense and was at the crime scene on October 2022, more than a year after the shootings.
Although he said the scene had changed since the June 2021 murders, Sutton also looked at photos of the evidence collected by SLED on the day of the killings.
Defense attorney Dick Harpootlian concluded by asking, ‘In going through the case file, did you see any evidence that state investigators did a bullet trajectory analysis like yours?’
Sutton said: ‘No.’
