Opinion by Kathleen Parker: Alex Murdaugh trial reveals a sloppy investigation
WALTERBORO, S.C. — The fourth week of Alex Murdaugh’s double-murder trial began with a cheerful pathologist explaining the gruesome ins and outs of bullets and pellets as they ravaged the bodies of 52-year-old Maggie Murdaugh and her 22-year-old son, Paul. And it pivoted midweek during a devastating defense cross-examination that poked holes in the state police’s murder investigation.
and showed jurors photos of blood pooling and spatter, indicating where the victims were standing when first shot and where they fell. Both victims were facing their killer, he said; neither had defensive wounds, presumably suggesting that they knew their assailant.
Among the several flaws that Griffin pointed out: Investigators didn’t bother to search Murdaugh’s mother’s house, where Murdaugh is thought to have stashed the murder weapons — a shotgun and a .300 Blackout semiautomatic rifle — until three months after the killings. SLED also took no DNA samples from either victim’s clothing. Most egregious, Owen incorrectly told the grand jury that blood spatter had been found on the T-shirt Murdaugh was wearing the night of the murders.
In other words, Murdaugh was likely indicted — at least in significant part — on the basis of, shall we say, a colossal untruth. Asked whether he had intended to mislead the grand jury, Owen said no. But he did intend to mislead Murdaugh during their third interview when he told him there was no unknown DNA at the murder scene. In fact, DNA from an unknown male was found under one of Maggie Murdaugh’s fingernails.
But testimony and cross-examination revealed that SLED dropped so many balls that Murdaugh, conceivably, might not have been indicted. Investigators apparently failed to consider any other potential suspects, including members of a local drug gang known as the Cowboys, with whom, according to Griffin, Murdaugh conducted business to the tune of
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