After her sister, Marian Proctor’s explosive testimony on the seventh day of his murder trial, observers and true crime obsessives are wondering did Alex Murdaugh cheat on Maggie.
Murdaugh is facing charges of double homicide in relation to the deaths of his wife, Maggie, and their son Paul, who were found shot to death on June 7, 2021. Murdaugh called 911 at around 10 pm. “I’ve been gone,” he told a dispatcher, NBC reported at the time. “I just came back.” He later told investigators he’d been spending the day with his mother, who has dementia, and her caregiver that day. On September 6, Murdaugh released a public statement to say he’d resigned from his family’s law firm, Peters, Murdaugh, Parker, Eltzroth & Detrick, saying he’d “made a lot of decisions that I truly regret” (per WCSC) and cited a substance abuse problem. Shortly after, the firm released its own statement alleging Murdaugh had misappropriated funds. But there’s a new layer to this case as Proctor took the stand on day seven of the trial and delivered some pretty explosive testimony.
Did Alex Murdaugh cheat on Maggie?
Did Alex Murdaugh cheat on Maggie? It seems so, yes. In her testimony at Murdaugh’s trial, Maggie’s sister Marian Procter told of Murdaugh’s extramarital affair that happened more than a decade ago, as well as his abuse of prescription painkillers. The Independent described that while the jury was out of the room, Proctor claimed infidelity had happened 15 years ago and while Murdaugh and Maggie were able to work through it at the time, it was still a sensitive topic in their marriage, enough to bring it up with her sister shortly before she was killed. “She did not think anyone was still going on, it just bothered her,” Proctor said, adding that Maggie made her husband leave the house years ago when she first became suspicious of the affair. Murdaugh’s lawyers denied the affair and requested the jury not hear anything related to it as it would have nothing to do with motive.
Alex Murdaugh. Joshua Boucher/Getty Images
Murdaugh’s trial began on January 23, 2023. In his opening statement, Creighton Waters, the state’s lead prosecutor in the case, noted that neither Paul nor Margaret had defensive wounds, “as if they didn’t see a threat coming from their attacker.” The details of the injuries suffered by Murdaugh’s wife and son are “gruesome”, Waters told the jury. He also noted cellphone data that placed Murdaugh at the scene of the crime just minutes before his family’s phones would “go silent forever”. Police also found a “wadded up” raincoat inside Murdaugh’s parents’ home that was “coated in gunshot residue.” Waters painted a picture of an increasingly desperate Murdaugh.
The prosecution alleged his decades of financial crimes created a “perfect storm” that led him to kill his son and wife as a way of garnering sympathy and diverting attention from the money he was accused of stealing. “You’re going to reach the inevitable conclusion that Alex murdered Maggie and Paul! He was the storm,” Waters told the jury in his opening statement. “It’s complicated. It’s a journey. There’s a lot of aspects to this case,” Waters said. “But like a lot of things that are complicated, we start to put them all together, piecing together like a puzzle—all the sudden, a picture emerges.” Harpootlian, on Murdaugh’s defense team, insisted there were numerous holes in the prosecution’s case. “I want you to hear that 911 tape, a man hysterical and in grief,” he said, frequently referring to Murdaugh as a family man who loved Paul and Margaret deeply. “There’s no direct evidence. There’s no eyewitnesses. There’s nothing on camera. There’s no fingerprints. There’s no forensics tying him to the crime. None,” Harpootlian continued.
Taking the stand himself on February 23, 2023, Murdaugh spoke of his drug dependence in his testimony during the prosecution’s cross-examination and how “stealing money” from his law firm, Peters, Murdaugh, Parker, Eltzroth & Detrick. Over more than a decade, Murdaugh embezzled more than $8 million from the firm and his clients and is accused of around 100 financial crimes involving fraud, forgery, money laundering and tax evasion.
On September 4, 2021, Murdaugh was injured in a roadside shooting in Hampton County. His lawyer Jim Griffin told news outlets at the time that Murdaugh’s car, a Mercedes-Benz SUV, had a flat tire and he’d pulled over when someone opened fire, Murdaugh escaped with a superficial headwound. A little over a week later, authorities looking into the roadside shooting said Murdaugh had hired someone to kill him so that his surviving son, Buster, could collect on a life insurance policy.
Alex Murdaugh. Image: Joshua Boucher/Getty Images
“I meant for him to shoot me, so I’d be gone,” Murdaugh said during his testimony on February 23, 2023. “I knew all this was coming to a head, I knew how humiliating this was going to be for my son. I’d been through so much. At the time, in the bad place that I was, it seemed like the better thing to do.” He added that he had $12 million in life insurance for himself but neither Paul nor Maggie had life insurance policies. When asked if he killed or would ever hurt his wife or son, Murdaugh replied: “I would never hurt Maggie and I would never hurt Paul.”
A cellphone video is the most damning piece of evidence against Murdaugh, it was taken by him about five minutes before prosecutors say the slayings took place and it captured Maggie’s voice in the background. He’d previously denied being at the property on the night of the killings but blamed his earlier denials on paranoia and his longtime addiction to painkillers, specifically oxycodone. “Once I lied,” he said, “I continued to lie.”
If you’re interested in learning more about the family, don’t miss Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal on Netflix. The synopsis of which is as follows: “The Murdaughs were one of South Carolina’s most prominent families, but the death of teenager Mallory Beach in a drunken boating accident began the unraveling of their legacy. When Paul Murdaugh—the alleged driver of the boat—and his mother Maggie are found brutally murdered, a century of corruption, power, and cover-ups in the Low Country is brought to light. The three-part series will feature first-hand accounts from those on the boat that fateful night, many of whom have not spoken about the crash or double homicide of Maggie and Paul until now, including Paul Murdaugh’s longtime girlfriend, Morgan Doughty; Mallory Beach’s childhood friends, Miley Altman and Connor Cook; Mallory’s boyfriend, Anthony Cook; and, several others.”
Netflix’s Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal is available to stream now.
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