Phone calls to Maggie the night of the murder deleted from Murdaugh’s phone, witness says

Calls to Maggie Murdaugh’s phone the night she was murdered appear to have been deleted from Alex Murdaugh’s phone.

The State Law Enforcement Division agent who pulled the information from Murdaugh’s phone, testified on Wednesday to the discrepancy between the two phone records at the Colleton County Courthouse, where Murdaugh is on trial for the murders of his wife, Maggie, and son, Paul.

Records from Maggie’s phone introduced first on Tuesday indicated five missed calls from her husband at 9:04, 9:06, 9:06, 9:45 and 10:03 p.m. — after prosecutors allege she was killed. But those calls are missing from the call log on Murdaugh’s phone. The only activity recorded at the time was an unanswered call to Maggie made from Murdaugh’s phone at 10:25 p.m.

SLED Lt. Britt Dove said call logs can be overridden by subsequent call activity on a phone, but he didn’t see enough such activity on Murdaugh’s phone to explain why those calls would be missing.

“As call log builds up, phone calls might eventually drop off,” he said. “(But) that would be a pretty long list.”

Instead, “a gap like that would indicate it was actually removed from there,” Dove said Wednesday.

Several texts sent to Murdaugh’s phone that night also went unread until the next day, Dove said, including texts about his father’s hospitalization.

Dove testified he pulled all call logs on Maggie’s phone for the final two days of her life, June 5 to June 7, 2021. He said he examined all of Murdaugh’s phone activity from May 1 to the date of the murder.

Expert explains Maggie’s cellphone activity

On Tuesday, Dove was meticulously going through the call data, slowly painting a picture of the last moments of Maggie’s life, and what happened to her phone after she died

Maggie’s phone was found hundreds of meters from her body the night she and Paul were shot to death at the family’s rural Colleton County estate. While Paul’s phone was found near his body, Maggie’s was not recovered until the next day, when it was found on a road near the property using an app on her surviving son Buster’s phone. Buster had shared locations turned on for his mother’s phone.

Dove testified that when he received Maggie’s phone, it had five missed calls from Murdaugh. The agent’s testimony laid out side-by-side the timeline of those missed messages with the activity of Maggie’s phone, showing how the device moved because it recorded the steps of the person carrying it and even recorded orientation changes as though someone were moving the screen around in their hand — all after the time Maggie is believed to have been shot and killed at the family’s rural Colleton County estate.

At 8:49 pm, prosecutors say Maggie’s phone went silent forever, meaning Maggie never initiated any activity, answered any calls or read any texts from this point onward. But at 8:54 p.m., the phone’s camera activated as if it were trying to recognize a face for a facial recognition unlock. One orientation change occurred at 9:06 p.m. — the same time Murdaugh made one of several phone calls to Maggie’s phone.

The same expert testified to Paul’s phone activity, including a lengthy text exchange that ends with a message read but not responded to at 8:48 p.m., moments before it is believed he and his mother were shot to death.

‘Rotting away.’ Recorded phone calls depict Alex Murdaugh’s life in Richland County jail

Circle of investigation

In a bracing cross-examination Tuesday, defense attorney Jim Griffin dug into decisions investigators made while gathering evidence and conducting interviews that he argued led investigators to focus on Murdaugh.

In the days after the murders, investigators talked to hundreds of people in an attempt to widen their circle of investigation, SLED agent Jeff Croft testified, which started with the only living person at the crime scene: Murdaugh.

Croft testified earlier this week that during a SLED interview with Murdaugh on June 10, 2021, Murdaugh broke down sobbing while talking about Paul. Murdaugh said of Paul, “I did him so bad,” Croft told the jury.

The statement had been first revealed to the jury during the playing of a video of an interview with Murdaugh.

But the recording divided onlookers about whether Murdaugh said that. Many reported hearing, “they did him so bad.” Murdaugh, sitting with his lawyers, mouthed “they.”

The defense appeared confident that Murdaugh said “they,” and Tuesday Griffin replayed the audio once at normal speed and then again at one-third speed. The drawn out, distorted syllables did not clarify anything to a certainty.

“Are you 100% confident that Alex said ‘I did him so bad’ and not ‘they did him so bad?’” Griffin asked Croft.

“I am 100% confident in what I heard and what I testified to,” Croft replied.

Why then did he not pursue the matter with Murdaugh, or even make a note of an apparent confession, Griffin asked.

Croft stated that he “made a mental note of it,” but testified that he did not want to appear to challenge Murdaugh on any of his statements before investigators had more information.

More testimony on phones, guns

On Tuesday, other witnesses delivered crucial testimony to the timeline of Maggie and Paul’s deaths.

Jonathan VanHouten, a former Columbia police officer and now a U.S. Secret Service employee, testified about how he was able to use a “brute force” method to get into Paul’s cellphone. Paul had also used a password based on his date of birth, and that proved helpful in gaining access, he testified.

“People are creatures of habit,” VanHouten said.

Prosecutors have said there is crucial video on Paul’s cellphone — video that will place Murdaugh at the dog kennels shortly before Maggie and Paul were killed. That video will puncture Murdaugh’s alibi, prosecutors have said, since he claims he was not at the kennels that night.

Another witness, John Bedingfield, a second cousin of Murdaugh’s — their grandmothers were sisters — told the jury Tuesday how he had configured two assault-type rifles for Murdaugh to fire the powerful .300 Blackout rounds. Bedingfield, a state Department of Natural Resources officer, repairs, makes and sells guns in his spare time.

“He (Alex) was looking for a couple of guns for the boys (Buster and Paul) to hunt pigs with” around Christmas 2016, Bedingfield told Waters.

Murdaugh wanted the rifles configured to accept and fire the powerful .300 Blackout rounds, which are perfect for hunting wild hogs in the country, animals so numerous they constitute a menace to people and crops, Bedingfield testified.

Those two guns, with mounted expensive thermal scopes so the boys could hunt at night, and sirocco paint jobs cost $9,188 for the pair, Bedingfield testified. He painted Buster’s gun black; Paul’s tan.

Bedingfield said Murdaugh came to him in 2018 to buy a third .300 Blackout configured rifle that only cost $875 because it lacked a thermal scope. Murdaugh said he had to buy a third gun because Paul had lost his, Bedingfield testified.

This story may be updated.