5 key takeaways from the Murdaugh murder trial

Prosecutors have since charged him with stealing a total of about $8.8 million. He confessed under oath to many of those crimes, including embezzling about $3.7 million in 2019. That same year, his son Paul was charged with ramming a boat into a bridge while intoxicated and one of his passengers, 19-year-old Mallory Beach for having killed .

Mr Murdaugh has claimed that he believed his son was being attacked by one or more unknown assailants because of his involvement in the crash.

Prosecutors relied on Murdaugh’s lies to convince the jury not to trust him.

In addition to a string of financial misdeeds, Mr. Murdaugh testified to a long-standing addiction to painkillers and a penchant for lying. Prosecutors used this admission – how willingly and easily he lied to the police, his family and friends – to convince the jury that he lied about not killing his wife and son.

At one point, Chief Prosecutor Creighton Waters held up a stack of papers relating to customers Mr. Murdaugh had stolen from.

“Every one of them had you sitting down and looking someone in the eye and convincing them that you were on their side when you weren’t, right?” he asked, looking straight at the jury.

“I admit that I misled her, acted wrongly and stole her money,” Mr. Murdaugh replied.

In turn, Mr Murdaugh’s lawyers framed his admission of his lies as a willingness to come in – that he acknowledged his shortcomings but had never been violent and never carried out the murders.

Surviving relatives were among Murdaugh’s most ardent defenders—up to a point.

Friends and relatives said Mr Murdaugh was devastated by the killings and his brother John Marvin Murdaugh testified that he “would have to invent a new word to describe how distraught he was”.