South Carolina’s top prosecutor aimed a shotgun at the back of a crime scene expert’s head while rejecting Alex Murdaugh‘s “preposterous” justification for killing his wife and children.
After calling his last witness, Texas Attorney General Alan Wilson took the 12-gauge before closing arguments began on Wednesday.
Wilson used the weapon to re-enact the defense’s argument that one of two murders stood over Murdaugh’s son Paul, 22, and blew his brains out.
Kenneth Kinsey, an expert, was consulted.
Kinsey then stepped outside the courtroom door to show the defense’s allegation of how Paul and his mother, Maggie, 52, were slain in dog kennels at one of their properties in June 2021.
Wilson then responded, “I’m going to point like I’m pointing at you,” aiming the shotgun only a few inches to the left of his witness.
Kinsey then said that “the defense agreed that Paul stood there for a time” after being punched in the chest and then stumbled through the doorway.
“The shooter’s coming in the door – he shoots Paul in the back of the head after he passes him,” Kinsey remarked as the two men squeezed through the courtroom entrance, clearly straining to hold back a snicker at the defense hypothesis.
He then knelt in front of the AG, who dramatically raised the 12-gauge and pointed it down near his witness’s head, just a few inches to the side.
Wilson told the court that the murderer “then shoots Paul in the back of the head like this,” jerking the weapon as if shooting while Murdaugh dropped his eyes at the horrific re-enactment.
The perspective, the defense said, revealed that the murderer was no taller than 5 feet 4 inches.
Kinsey, on the other hand, claimed he had “zero faith” in the hypothesis that the gunman shot upward, claiming that it could have easily been someone as tall as the 6-foot-4 Murdaugh.
When Kinsey displayed how Paul’s blood and brains were blown all over the top of the door, the humiliated legal scion kept his eyes down.
“I believe the notion is absurd,” Kinsey remarked of the murderer being shot down from above.
He saw “no faults, no fissures in the cement,” as well as “no high-velocity blood splatter on the floor.”
“You would notice a pattern [of splatter and blowback] on the floor precisely as you see in the images of the top of that door. None of it is present.”
He also dismissed the notion that the shooter “squeezed up past” Paul “to go inside and shot him back out,” pointing out that the pellets collected at the scene did not support this theory.
After more than a month of testimony, Kinsey was the last witness, with closing arguments slated to begin on Wednesday.
Jurors will first go to the Murdaugh family estate, Moselle, for a “jury view” of the murder scene before returning to the courthouse to hear closing arguments from the prosecution and defense.
Judge Clifton Newman stated the jury will return to court at about 11 a.m. ET for final statements.
Murdaugh, the 54-year-old scion of an established legal family in a region west of Charleston, shockingly revealed to detectives – as well as his own family – that he was there at the crime scene until seconds before his wife and son were slain.
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“I lied to them,” he said shortly after mounting the stand.
He has, however, consistently denied the murders. If convicted, he faces 30 years to life in jail.
Even if he is acquitted, he faces decades in jail for the other crimes, some of which he confessed during his own evidence during his double murder trial.
These include stealing millions of dollars from customers and his own family law company, as well as a mad plan to kill himself so that his surviving son, Buster, could earn a $10 million insurance claim.
Murdaugh also acknowledged long-term drug addiction.