Paul Murdaugh sent a Snapchat video to his friends minutes before his death according to a motion brought from the South Carolina state attorney prosecuting Alex Murdaugh, the disgraced former lawyer whose trial is scheduled to begin this week, in the death of his son and wife.
Margaret “Maggie” Murdaugh 53, and their son Paul, Paul Murdaugh, 22 was found murdered on the property of the family in June 2021.
If it’s true that we experience the world through a lens created by our brain then our lens is a bit warped and sometimes wears bunny ears. pic.twitter.com/uCLfOjrJ40
— Snapchat (@Snapchat) December 26, 2022
Alex Murdaugh has denied he was involved in their deaths. He also has pleaded not to be guilty to murder charges.
Jury selection began on Monday. The trial could take up 3 weeks or more, the attorneys representing the defense and prosecution have claimed.
A total of three generations from the Murdaugh family have been attorneys for prosecuting in the coastal region of South Carolina, but a succession of deaths and accusations of fraud in the insurance industry and embezzlement caused the family’s history to come to an end and drew national interest.
The mention of the video in the filing that was obtained through The Star Bulletin affiliate WCSC It is one of the first references to the Snapchat video by prosecutor’s lawyers who plan to utilize it as evidence for their trial against Murdaugh.
Snapchat recorded the conversation in the context of a warrant for search in the document.
“Amongst others, crucial to the investigation is a tape that was sent to a number of friends around 7:56 pm on evening of murder.” stated the court filing.
“The content of this video are crucial to support the State’s argument in the main,” reads the document which was written by state prosecutor.
The document is not clear what the content of the video is and the significance to the situation is unclear.
As of the month of October The Star Bulletin stated that in October that court documents filed by prosecutors claimed that the mother and son died between 8:06 p.m. between 10:06 and 8:30 p.m. In court papers. According to the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division previously reported that the deaths occurred in the hours between 9 p.m. between 9 p.m. and 9:30 p.m.
Prosecutor Creighton Waters demanded to have an official from Snapchat which is a social network, that has provided the video “testify in the presence of a person in person that the footage is a genuine and correct record of the course of normal business.”
Judge Clifton Newman ruled in favor of the motion and made an order to the Los Angeles, district court to compel Snapchat’s representative Snapchat to be in attendance at the Murdaugh trial beginning on the day that jurors begin selection.
