Walterboro, S.C.- Alex Murdaugh sat still, staring straight ahead, as he listened to the sound of his own voice admitting to lying about being shot by a stranger while changing a tire on the side of a road. The 54-year-old rubbed his chin from time to time, but his long, stretched-out leg stopped twitching.
“I was in a very bad place,” Murdaugh tells police in the recorded call played for jurors Thursday. “I thought it would be better for me not to be here anymore.”
Murdaugh goes on to explain he thought his family would be better off without him, so he staged his own death in hopes his son could collect millions in life insurance money. But the gunman missed, hitting just the top of Murdaugh’ s head. Police spent a week searching for the suspect Murdaugh had described in detail prior to his confession.
The staged roadside shooting is the third alleged crime jurors have heard about involving Murdaugh who’s currently on trial for the murders of his wife and son June 7, 2021. They’ve also heard testimony the disgraced attorney spent more than a decade stealing roughly $10 million from his family law firm, clients and friends.
Prosecutors argue the financial crimes will help prove motive; that is Murdaugh was desperate when he killed his loved ones, desperate to get sympathy and distract from the embezzlement allegations that were about to be exposed.
The botched shooting, they say, establishes a pattern of Murdaugh lying and resorting to violence when confronted with wrongdoings.
The morning of the faked roadside shooting, Murdaugh had just admitted to his best friend he had stolen money and had been fired from the law firm, adding he’d also been addicted to opioids for nearly 20 years. The friend had no idea Murdaugh was using drugs.
But it was his drug dealer, Murdaugh tells police in the recording played for jurors, he called to kill him; a man Murdaugh claims to have paid $40,000 to $60,000 a week for pills.
“I called Curtis Eddie Smith,” says Murdaugh. “I told them this is getting really bad. I asked him to shoot me.”
Smith, an acquaintance Murdaugh met through his father, has said he was set up.
Murdaugh goes on to describe in the recorded confession, a hastily planned shooting in which he claims Smith agreed to kill him without getting paid. Murdaugh says the two spoke at a gas station, then met down the road where Smith gave him a knife to slash his tire, and Murdaugh gave Smith a gun.
The shotgun Murdaugh reported hearing when he called in the shooting to police turned out to be his own .38 revolver.
Murdaugh apologizes to the investigator in the recording as he explains he’s in rehab after being released from the hospital for opioid withdrawal. There’s talk he offered to pay nurses in the hospital to use the phone to call his alleged drug dealer. Murdaugh says he doesn’t recall.
The investigator asks again if Smith was paid. Murdaugh says “no”. The agent says that doesn't make sense, then wants to know if Murtaugh’s son Buster is in danger because his drug dealers are involved.
Again, Murdaugh says "no".
Finally, the investigator asks Murdaugh why he didn’t tell the truth initially. Murdaugh says he doesn’t know, adding he’d even lied to his family.
“I did not tell anyone the truth until yesterday afternoon.”
The defense will cross examine the investigator when court resumes Friday morning, the same day the prosecution has said it hopes to wrap up its case after four weeks of testimony.
