We are back after lunch. Griffin continues to question his client, Alex Murdaugh.
Griffin brings up Jeanne Seckinger’s 6/7/21 confrontation of AM about missing $792,000 in legal fees from the Mack Trucks case AM worked with Chris Wilson. G: “Did (the money) come to you directly?” AM: “Yes.” G: “Should it have come to you directly?” AM: “No.”
AM: “The conversation got interrupted very quickly. I told Jeanne that the funds were in Chris Wilson’s account, and there was nothing to worry about.”
Griffin: What was your level of concern about the inquiry? AM: “There was some level of concern because she was asking me about money that I took that I wasn’t supposed to have. … It wasn’t a very big concern.”
Griffin asks whether Wilson was going to turn over financial documents to PMPED that could expose him. AM: No. Not anytime soon. He and Wilson were close. “It wasn’t anything that was a big deal.” No sense of urgency on 6/7/21 about Seckinger’s inquiry.
Griffin: “On June 7, did you believe that your financial house of cards was about to crumble?” AM: “On June 7? Absolutely not.”
Griffin: Did Maggie’s death make it more difficult to obtain financing immediately after the murders? On June 7, 8? AM: Yes. Because the entire Moselle property was 100% in Maggie’s name. The Edisto property was 50% in her name.
Griffin is trying to discredit the state’s alleged motive for the slayings, showing that Maggie’s death hindered AM more than it could have helped him.
Murdaugh said he was not concerned about the 6/10/21 motions hearing in which Beach family attorney Mark Tinsley was seeing Murdaugh’s financial records.
Griffin: “Were you concerned that your financial house was going to be opened up to the world at that hearing?” Murdaugh: No. I’ve been a plaintiff’s lawyer for my whole career. I do the exact same thing as Mark Tinsley. In my 27 years of practicing, plaintiffs are always …
... trying to get financial documents from defendants. In my 27 years, I’ve never been able to get a judge to order anything more than a net worth statement prior to trial.
Griffin: “Alex, the jury has heard testimony about you stealing client funds. Did you do that?” AM: “I did.”
Griffin: “How did you get in such a financial predicament that led you to steal money that wasn’t yours.” AM: “I’m not quite sure how I let myself get where I got. I battled that addiction for so many years. I was spending so much money on pills.”
AM says he first became addicted to painkillers in the early 2000s after a knee surgery for a lingering issue that began when he was injured while playing football. “It just escalates and escalates.”
He has been to a detox facility three times. First in December 2017. He said he had tried to detox before at home. Didn’t work. “Maggie would help me.”
“Opiate withdrawal is, whew, it’s hard,” Murdaugh said. Initially, “you’re sick. You throw up. You have terrible diarrhea. You sweat like you’re running a marathon. You can’t hold your legs still.”
AM says he would relapse soon after detoxing. He never entered rehab to learn how to stay off drugs for good. He has now been opioid-free for 135 days. “I’m very proud of that.”
AM says he confessed to stealing money and told his law partners about his opioid addiction in September, when they confronted him with evidence he had stolen from clients and his law partners. “I’m certain that they were not aware” of my opioid addiction, AM says.
AM essentially describes himself as a high-functioning addict.
535 days without drugs, by the way. Not 135. I mistyped.
AM on Curtis Smith and the September 2021 roadside shooting. “I meant for him to shoot me so I’d be gone.”
Griffin: “Why did you want to be gone?” AM: “I knew all of this was coming to a head. I knew how humiliating it as going to be for my son.” AM testifies he had an $8 million policy and a $4 million policy for himself. He says he never had any life insurance on Maggie or Paul.
AM on Maggie: “Y’all saw a picture. She was just as beautiful inside as she was outside. She was so adventurous. You couldn’t tell her something was good or bad. She wanted to find out for herself. She wanted to do it, see it, experience it on her own.” “She was devoted.”
“She never took not working for granted. She might not have worked, but I promise you she worked.” She made sure me and Paul and Buster had everything.
AM testifies about how difficult both of Maggie’s pregnancies were. She was sick all the time. She initially wanted a big family but they had to stop after Paul. “I just think how hard it was on her just made her love those boys so much more.”
AM: Maggie looked at home in a ball gown at the governor’s mansion and while working at a food bank in Hampton. “She was just a special person.” Griffin: Would you ever do anything to harm Maggie? AM: “I would never hurt Maggie, ever.”
AM on Paul: “He was 100 percent country boy. He was tough. He could hunt anything. He could catch any fish. He could run any piece of equipment. He could use any tool. He could do anything. At 22 years old, he could do so many things.”
AM on Paul: AM: “On the other hand, he had a side to him that was just so sweet.” He would go out of his way to check on his grandparents. He would get all of his buddies to go on a boat and go watch a sunset.
AM: “He was fiercely, fiercely loyal. He was so misrepresented in the media.” He challenges anybody listening to find somebody who really knew Paul and doesn’t have an ulterior motive to say something negative about Paul.
Griffin asked AM a couple of open-ended questions and let him go for a while about Maggie and Paul. Griffin: “Did you love Paul?” AM: “Did I love him? Like no other. He and Buster.”
Griffin: “Did you love Maggie?” AM: “More than anything. I loved Maggie from the first time we went out.” Griffin: “Did you kill Maggie?” “I would never hurt Maggie. And I would never hurt Paul. Ever. Under any circumstances.”
We are on a 10-minute break. Then the state will begin cross-examining AM. Buckle up.
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