John Marvin Murdaugh describes crime scene, SLED investigation at brother’s murder trial

Alex Murdaugh’s brother testified Monday to instances when he believed law enforcement was trying to mislead him about their investigation into Murdaugh’s role in the murders of his wife and son.

During an interview with the S.C. Law Enforcement Division in August 2022, John Marvin Murdaugh said he was told by an agent that investigators “knew” his brother was involved in the deaths of his wife, Maggie, and son, Paul, because his shirt that night was covered in blood, and that Murdaugh could even be seen on police body camera footage wiping blood off his face onto the T-shirt.

Not only has the prosecution not introduced evidence of a bloody shirt at the disgraced Lowcountry attorney’s double-murder trial in Colleton County, but jurors have heard blood could never be conclusively found on the clothes Murdaugh wore when he called 911 on the night of June 7, 2021.

John Marvin was the third member of the Murdaugh family to testify, after his nephew, Buster, and Murdaugh himself. He was the 14th and the last defense witness called overall during the six-week trial.

The white T-shirt was just one piece of evidence John Marvin called into question. He also testified that a SLED agent told him they had recovered a coat from somewhere in the “back” of his parents’ property at Almeda. He and other family members were later shown the blue raincoat investigators said they recovered from a closet inside the house.

John Marvin said he had never seen the raincoat before, and said he never received an explanation for why he was told it was recovered from a different location.

Once John Marvin left the stand, the defense rested its case. On Tuesday, the state called reply witnesses to the defense case, and later in the week the jury is expected to visit the crime scene at Moselle itself before they deliberate on a verdict.

‘This is going to be difficult’

John Marvin testified to ”the hardest thing I ever had to do in my life.”

The day after Maggie and Paul were shot and killed at the family’s rural Colleton County property, John Marvin wanted to go out to the dog kennels where his nephew and sister-in-law had been murdered. He checked with law enforcement before he went down there, and was told the scene had been cleared and he could go, he testified.

He was disturbed enough seeing the spot where he knew Maggie’s body had laid covered with a sheet just hours before. But he had a whole different experience when he went into the feed room where Paul had been shot in the head with a shotgun.

Asked by defense attorney Jim Griffin if the room had been cleaned, John Marvin said, “No, Jim, it was not cleaned up.”

“This is going to be difficult,” he said, becoming emotional on the witness stand. “There was brains, blood, pieces of skull. It was terrible.”

Standing there, “I felt like it was something I needed to do for Paul to clean it up.” John Marvin said. “No father, mother or uncle should have to see or do what I did that day. I was just overwhelmed. I would stop, crying for a moment, just in disbelief.”

Finally, an emotional John Marvin called his brother, Randy, who told him to immediately stop doing what he was doing.

His friend Mark Ball “came and hugged me and said it was OK to leave, and they would clean it up,” John Marvin said. “It was the hardest thing I ever had to do in my life.”

Ball testified earlier in the trial to the condition of the feed room, what the defense has pointed to as evidence of lax work with the crime scene by investigators, who have charged Murdaugh with killing his wife and son on June 7, 2021.

John Marvin did agree with other witnesses that the voice on a cellphone video Paul shot on his phone shortly before the shootings belonged to his brother. Murdaugh admitted on the witness stand last Thursday that he had lied to investigators about being at the property’s dog kennels shortly before Paul and Maggie were killed, but insisted they were still alive when he left.

John Marvin couldn’t say if his brother had ever told him the truth about his whereabouts that night, between when investigators played the tape for him in August 2022 and when Murdaugh took the stand last week.

“I can’t say we’ve had an opportunity to even speak,” John Marvin said.

Murdaugh has been in jail on a variety of criminal charges since October 2021.

He testified to his close relationship with Paul, 22, tearing up at times as he recalled his nephew, who worked for him in his tractor dealership and with whom he had “a special relationship.”

“They called him Little Rooster, Pau Pau, my kids called him that,” John Marvin said.

He agreed with the defense’s contention that Paul often would leave his guns in various locations. He described a duck-hunting trip he went on with Paul in a duck blind on his property.

“I went back two weeks later, and his hunting gear is still in the blind,” John Marvin said. “That was just Paul.”

John Marvin testified that he promised Paul back when he was cleaning the room that he would find who killed him.

“I told him I loved him, and I promised him that I’d find out who did this to him,” he said.

Has he found the killer, Griffin asked.

“I have not,” John Marvin replied.

Reporter John Monk contributed.