Murdaugh Evidence Exhibits: Kennel Video, Phone Data, and GSR

The evidence at Alex Murdaugh’s trial was almost entirely circumstantial, and prosecutors built their case around a short cellphone video that placed him at the crime scene minutes before his wife and son were killed. The rest of the Murdaugh trial evidence filled in a timeline: phone data, step counts, GPS and OnStar records from his SUV, shell casings tied to family weapons, gunshot residue on his clothing, and a years-long financial fraud that prosecutors offered as motive. The murder weapons were never recovered, and the six-week trial ran through more than 75 witnesses and roughly 800 photographs, reports, and exhibits.¹ The convictions were unanimously overturned by the South Carolina Supreme Court in May 2026 over jury tampering by the former clerk of court, and a retrial is pending.²

The Kennel Video

The most important exhibit was a short video Paul Murdaugh recorded on his cellphone at 8:44 p.m. on June 7, 2021. Paul was filming a dog at the family’s kennels for his friend Rogan Gibson, and three voices are audible in the background, discussing whether the dog had “a chicken or a guinea” in its mouth. Multiple witnesses identified the voices as Paul, his mother Maggie, and his father Alex.³

The recording was made roughly five minutes before the killings. That mattered because Alex Murdaugh had repeatedly told investigators he was never at the kennels that evening, saying he had been napping at the main house before driving to visit his mother. Maggie’s and Paul’s phones went permanently silent at 8:49 p.m.⁴ Murdaugh’s eventual admission at trial that he had lied about being at the kennels became a pivotal moment in the case.

Phone Data and the Step-Counter Gap

SLED agents built a minute-by-minute timeline from the phones of Alex, Maggie, and Paul. It was presented as a 43-page, color-coded chart covering a six-hour window and drew on GPS pings, call and text logs, iMessages, Snapchat activity, and step-counter data.⁵

Alex Murdaugh’s phone recorded zero steps between 8:09 p.m. and 9:02 p.m. Prosecutors said that gap was consistent with the phone being set down while he was at the kennels, not with a man napping at the house.⁴ Just after 9 p.m., the phone logged a burst of activity — more than 70 steps per minute over roughly four minutes — which prosecutors described as a rush to leave the property.⁵ The BBC reported the figure as 283 steps in four minutes.⁶ Agents also testified that call records between Alex’s and Maggie’s phones had been manually deleted from the device.

OnStar and Infotainment Data From the SUV

Two separate data sources tracked Murdaugh’s 2021 Chevrolet Suburban after the killings. General Motors contacted investigators during the trial to report that OnStar had captured location and telemetry data from the vehicle. SLED special agent Peter Rudofski testified that the SUV left Moselle at 9:07 p.m., drove past the spot where Maggie’s phone was later found in the undergrowth at 42 mph, then accelerated to 74 mph. Murdaugh arrived at his mother’s house at 9:22 p.m. and left at 9:43 p.m., a stay of 21 minutes that contradicted his earlier claim of 30 to 40 minutes.⁷

By 10:05 p.m., the Suburban was back at the kennels. Within 20 seconds Murdaugh dialed 911, which Rudofski said was hard to square with Murdaugh’s statement that he first checked on the bodies before calling.⁷

Separately, FBI automotive forensics specialist Dwight Falkofske pulled data from the SUV’s encrypted onboard computer, a process the FBI had spent a year developing. The infotainment records showed the vehicle shifting in and out of park several times between 9:06 p.m. and 10:13 p.m. and logged Bluetooth call activity showing two calls placed at 10:06 p.m.: the first to “9111” and the second, two seconds later, to “911.”⁸ Falkofske also testified that Maggie’s phone did not connect to the SUV’s Bluetooth that evening, even though it had connected previously, which prosecutors used to argue she had not ridden with him.⁹

Firearms, Casings, and Missing Weapons

Neither murder weapon was recovered. Pathologist Ellen Riemer testified that Paul was killed with a shotgun, taking two shots including a fatal one that entered his shoulder and exited through his head, and that Maggie was killed with a rifle, sustaining four or five gunshot wounds including a fatal chest wound that exited the left side of her face.¹⁰

Prosecutors alleged the rifle was a .300 Blackout AR-style weapon. The family had owned two custom Blackouts, given as Christmas presents to Paul and his brother Buster. One was reported stolen in 2017, and its replacement was never found.⁶ SLED toolmarks expert Paul Greer tied the scene to the family’s weapons through cartridge casings. He testified that casings recovered around Maggie’s body bore matching mechanism marks to weathered casings found outside the main house’s gun room and at the family’s shooting range, indicating all had been loaded and ejected from the same .300 Blackout rifle.¹¹

Court TV’s exhibit list catalogued a .300 Blackout rifle (State 88), a Browning shotgun (State 90), a 12-gauge shotgun (State 91), Blackout magazines (State 151/152), and additional Blackout casings (State 176). A shotgun Murdaugh was holding when first responders arrived was entered into evidence but was not believed to be a murder weapon.¹²

Gunshot Residue and the Blue Raincoat

Investigators recovered a blue raincoat from the second floor of Murdaugh’s mother’s home. SLED forensic scientist Megan Fletcher testified she found 38 particles of gunshot primer residue inside the jacket and 14 on the outside. Residue particles were also detected on the shirt and shorts Murdaugh wore that night and on samples from his hands.¹²

The defense contested the exhibit. A witness, Mushelle “Shelley” Smith, had initially described seeing a “tarp” rather than a raincoat, and defense attorney Jim Griffin brought a blue tarp into the courtroom to argue the two items were distinct. Judge Clifton Newman scheduled a separate hearing on the admissibility of the SLED forensic report on the jacket.¹³

Blood Spatter on the T-Shirt

Small stains on the white T-shirt Murdaugh wore that night, entered as State Exhibit 418, produced one of the trial’s sharpest forensic fights. Prosecution expert Tom Bevel concluded the marks were high-velocity blood spatter consistent with close proximity to a gunshot. The defense moved to exclude Bevel’s testimony, arguing he had changed his position after meeting with SLED agents. Defense expert Dr. Kenneth Kinsey, an Orangeburg County deputy chief and former SLED agent, submitted an affidavit calling the stains “too hard to identify as high-velocity spatter.” Kinsey described the large stain on the bottom of the shirt as a “transfer of spatter by a wipe,” suggesting Murdaugh had wiped his face or forehead with that portion of the shirt, and said the smaller stains near the top were “distinctly different.”¹⁴

Crime Scene Photographs and Autopsy Diagrams

Jurors saw extensive photographic documentation of Moselle, including the kennels where the bodies were found, blood and biological material, shell casings, and the main house’s “gun room,” where a box of .300 Blackout cartridges sat on a bookcase. Autopsy diagrams accompanied Dr. Riemer’s testimony. SLED Agent Melinda Worley presented bullet-hole angle diagrams to counter the defense’s two-shooter theory, arguing that the patterns could be produced by a single shooter who moved between shots.¹⁵

Because of the graphic content, Judge Newman sealed all crime scene and autopsy photographs and videos depicting the victims. Media could observe the material as it was shown to the jury, but prosecutors were required to give only a general description when introducing each item, and the sealed files could not be copied or shared.¹⁶

Video Evidence Beyond the Kennels

Bodycam footage from Sgt. Daniel Greene of the Colleton County Sheriff’s Office captured the immediate aftermath: his arrival, his first interaction with Alex Murdaugh, and the scene at the kennels, including the moment a sheet was placed over Paul’s body.¹⁷ Jurors also watched Murdaugh’s first law enforcement interview, conducted that night inside SLED agent David Owens’s vehicle with Colleton County detective Laura Rutland present. In that interview, Murdaugh mentioned deer cameras on the property but said none were near the crime scene.¹⁸ Additional exhibits included drone footage of Moselle Road, a second police interview (State Exhibit 243), and a Snapchat video from earlier that evening showing Murdaugh standing by a tree on the property (State 305).¹⁹

The Defense’s Two-Shooter and Height Theory

The defense’s primary forensic witness was Mike Sutton, an engineer with North Carolina-based Accident Research Specialists. Judge Newman qualified him as an expert in acoustic analysis, shooting-incident reconstruction, and vehicle-accident reconstruction. Sutton analyzed two bullet holes at the scene, one in a quail pen on a table and one in a dog house, and traced trajectories to place where Maggie’s shooter had stood. He concluded that shooter fired from the hip and stood between 5’2″ and 5’4″, far shorter than the 6’4″ Murdaugh. For Paul’s shooting, Sutton positioned the shooter inside the feed room by tracing a line from a bullet hole in a window to a shotgun pellet lodged in a tree outside.²⁰

Prosecutors challenged Sutton’s lack of formal certification in firearms or pathology and argued shooter height could not be conclusively determined from the available evidence, calling his reconstruction only one possible scenario.¹⁵

Financial Crimes as Motive

Prosecutors argued Murdaugh killed his wife and son to divert attention from a looming financial collapse. In a pretrial ruling, Judge Newman allowed the financial crimes evidence in, finding jurors were “entitled to consider the apparent desperation of Mr. Murdaugh because of his dire financial situation and the threat of being exposed.”²¹ Newman also ruled that evidence of the 2019 boat crash that killed Mallory Beach and the resulting wrongful-death lawsuit was admissible after the defense “opened the door” during cross-examination.¹³

The financial evidence spanned years. Murdaugh had created a fictitious bank account under the name “Forge” to divert client settlement funds and law firm fees. The scheme included misappropriating $4.3 million from the heirs of his late housekeeper and $792,000 in attorney fees from a case with fellow lawyer Chris Wilson.²² Prosecutors alleged he stole roughly $8.5 million total from more than a dozen victims.²¹

The motive theory hinged on a specific deadline. The Beach family’s wrongful-death lawsuit had triggered a subpoena for Murdaugh’s bank records, with a hearing set for June 10, 2021, three days after the murders. That hearing would have exposed the fake Forge account.²²

What the Supreme Court Said About the Evidence

When the South Carolina Supreme Court unanimously overturned the convictions on May 13, 2026, it did so on jury tampering grounds tied to former Colleton County Clerk of Court Becky Hill, not on the evidence itself. The court found Hill exerted “improper external influences” on the jury, and three jurors or alternates indicated she attempted to influence them.²³

The justices did offer guidance for the retrial. They confirmed that financial crimes evidence remains admissible as motive evidence, but found the first trial went “far too long and far too deep” into that case, spending 12.5 hours of testimony on it across ten trial days. The court said prosecutors “could have effectively presented evidence to support its motive theory in a fraction of that time” and specifically flagged testimony from Tony Satterfield about his brother’s disability as having “zero probative value.”²

Attorney General Alan Wilson has vowed to retry Murdaugh as soon as possible, with prosecutors considering all options including the death penalty.²⁴ Defense attorneys Dick Harpootlian and Jim Griffin have said Murdaugh will not accept a plea deal. In June 2026 they filed a motion to move the trial out of the 14th Judicial Circuit and a separate motion to compel the state to release DNA evidence recovered from under Maggie Murdaugh’s fingernails for advanced forensic genetic genealogy testing, alleging the state did not adequately analyze it the first time. Chief Justice John Kittredge appointed Circuit Court Judge Debra R. McCaslin to preside over the retrial and all pretrial matters.²⁵ Murdaugh remains incarcerated on concurrent state and federal sentences of 27 and 40 years for guilty pleas in various financial crimes.²

1
El País. What to Know About Alex Murdaugh’s Murder Trial
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CNN. South Carolina Supreme Court Overturns Alex Murdaugh Murder Convictions
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NBC Miami. Alex Murdaugh Caught on Dog Kennel Video Near Scene of Crime
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WJCL. Murdaugh Murders Timeline Evidence
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Court TV. Murdaugh Prosecutors Reveal Flurry of Steps After Killings
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BBC. Alex Murdaugh Found Guilty of Murdering Wife and Son
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WYFF4. Newly Obtained GM OnStar Data Reveals Murdaugh’s Whereabouts
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Live 5 News. Prosecutors Use SUV Data to Add to Timeline at Murdaugh Trial
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The Independent. Alex Murdaugh Trial Car Data and Murders
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CNN. Alex Murdaugh Trial – Autopsy Testimony
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ABC News 4. Tool Marks Expert: Shell Casings Around Murdaugh’s Wife Match Those at Property
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CNN. Alex Murdaugh Trial – Physical Evidence
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Greenville Online. Alex Murdaugh Murder Trial – Judge Newman Rulings
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Live 5 News. Murdaugh Defense Petitions Court to Block Blood Spatter Expert Testimony
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CBS News. Alex Murdaugh Convicted – Crime Scene Evidence
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Fox Carolina. Judge Orders Crime Scene and Autopsy Media Into Sealed Evidence
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WCTI12. Body Cam Footage Shows Crime Scene Where Maggie and Paul Murdaugh Were Murdered
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CountOn2. Video Shows Alex Murdaugh’s First Interview With Law Enforcement
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Court TV. Alex Murdaugh Case Evidence Exhibits
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The State. Forensic Engineer Testifies Shooter Much Shorter Than Murdaugh
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NBC News. Judge Allows Alex Murdaugh’s Financial Crimes Evidence at Murder Trial
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ACFE. Alex Murdaugh Fraud Examiner Article
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People. Where Is Becky Hill Now
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BBC. Alex Murdaugh Murder Conviction Overturned
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Greenville Online. Alex Murdaugh Seeks Murder Retrial Outside Family’s Legal Dynasty