Alex Murdaugh's 'tangled web' is a tragedy without a hero

WALTERBORO, S.C. - Taking the witness stand was a high-risk gamble for defendant Alex Murdaugh, the disbarred attorney charged with killing his wife and son on June 7, 2021. Apparently, he decided to test the theory that admitting a lie is the shortest route to redemption - or at least to a hung jury. In testimony Thursday and Friday that alternated between sobs and steely resolve, Murdaugh finally admitted that, contrary to his consistent denials over the past year and a half, he was at the dog kennels where the murders took place - and where he claimed he later discovered the bodies of Maggie, 52, and Paul, 22. Did it work? Did his confession call into question the prosecution's case? And did his loving descriptions of "Paw Paw," the nickname he suddenly started using for Paul, and "Mags," ditto for his wife,create a well of sympathy deep enough to create doubt in at least one juror's mind? The nicknames, which appear in no other interviews or investigative documents, were jarring to many in the courtroom and on social media. But Murdaugh wasn't talking to those folks. His "Paw Paw" and "Mags" might well have been endearing to the only people who matter - the 12 jurors and two alternates who were surely relieved to hear something human-ish after weeks of mind-numbing data from experts. We'll have to wait for the jury to sort things out following closing arguments, probably next week. But my hunch is that Murdaugh planted seeds of doubt. After all, how could a man whose emotions were so real and who so plainly loved his wife and son kill them, using two different guns, after spending a pleasant evening with them? The answer is: It happens all the time. Nevertheless, such a scenario is usually impossible for normal people to contemplate. Neither can normal people imagine crying as convincingly as Murdaugh did - soaking countless tissues as mucus dripped from his nose - if they had pulled the triggers. One shotgun blast blew off the top of Paul's head; a semiautomatic rifle riddled Maggie's body before the shooter administered a kill shot to her head. Prosecutors allege that Alex Murdaugh did this. But by Friday morning, you'd have been hard-pressed to recall that the proceeding was a murder trial, as lead prosecutor Creighton Waters litigated Murdaugh's alleged financial crimes - a handful of the 99 charges against him in a separate set of indictments that haven't yet been tried. Under sometimes testy cross-examination, Murdaugh basically confessed to almost every financial allegation Waters raised. He didn't dispute that he lied, misled and took money that wasn't his. Waters was relentless in pressing Murdaugh to recall times when he looked clients in the eye and lied about settlements in personal injury lawsuits. Even in cases where Murdaugh was earning millions in lawyer's fees, he still saw fit to steal some or all of what his clients were due. Waters was trying to impress upon jury members that Murdaugh is a man who could look them in the eye and lie as well. Murdaugh's lawyers had feared this line of questioning when they unsuccessfully asked presiding Judge Clifton Newman to set limits on what the prosecution could ask. Against his lawyer's counsel, Murdaugh insisted on taking the stand anyway, allowing Waters to explore his theory about motive: that Murdaugh killed his wife and son upon realizing that his world was about to crumble. He killed them, the state claims, to distract from his financial crimes and engender sympathy. This has always seemed a dubious motive given that murder is not usually a shortcut to positive public opinion. Further to the state's argument, Murdaugh had been confronted by his law firm about missing funds the very morning of the murders. And that same week, he was facing a hearing in another case related to Paul's 2019 boat accident, in which 19-year-old Mallory Beach was killed. Lawyers for the Beach family were seeking access to Murdaugh's personal and professional accounts. Murdaugh has always insisted, even on the 911 call on June 7, that the murders were related to the boat accident. Friday, he testified that whoever committed the murders "hated Paul and they had anger" in his or their hearts. Undoubtedly, Murdaugh, a confessed opioid addict, was in a tailspin as he spent that final evening with Mags and Paw Paw. But could he really have killed Paul so brutally? Then, switching guns, could he really have riddled his wife's body with semiautomatic ammo before standing over her to administer the shot to her head? We know now, thanks to Waters's cross-examination, that Murdaugh is capable of creating elaborate plans and carrying out intricate financial maneuvers to satisfy his appetite for pills and a lifestyle most jurors will never experience. We know that he can look a vulnerable person in the eye and lie to them. We also know from testimony that when Maggie's sister, Marian Proctor, asked Alex if he knew who had committed the murders, he replied he didn't know, but "whoever did it had thought about it for a long time." It was an odd answer. As an amateur Freudian, I wondered if his unconscious mind had betrayed him. It's conceivable, if not necessarily plausible, that a criminal mastermind could have planned the murders, used two guns to create the impression of two shooters and built an alibi through his visit to his mother's house. The persistent lie that he hadn't been to the kennels that night burnishes the state's case, given irrefutable evidence that he was, in fact, there. Murdaugh hadn't counted on a kennel video extracted from Paul's cellphone, which captured Alex's voice along with Paul's and Maggie's. The reality is that Murdaugh had no choice but to confess to being at the kennels once he took the witness stand. He told jurors he lied because his addiction to opioids made him paranoid and, sitting in a law enforcement officer's vehicle shortly after discovering the gruesome murder scene, he decided to lie. Once he had told the lie, he said, he had to keep lying. Most of us know the guilty truth of that. Murdaugh further testified that he hadn't wanted to go to the kennels when Maggie asked him to go with her after dinner. He had just showered, was tired and figured if he went to the kennels, he'd have to deal with the chaos of their several dogs and end up working up another sweat. He finally did go, he said, in the spirit of a husband who ultimately does what his wife wants him to do. After hanging out with Maggie and Paul for a few minutes - and extracting a doomed chicken from his dog Bubba's jaws - he returned to the house, briefly napped, then left to visit his mother. Earlier in the day, his mother's caretaker had urged him to visit because his mom, who suffers from Alzheimer's disease, was agitated. In Murdaugh's own words on the witness stand: "What a tangled web we weave." At the end of Day 24 in a trial that was supposed to last three weeks, Murdaugh probably convinced at least some of the jurors who teared up during his emotional testimony that he couldn't be the killer. His tears and sniffles were real. But so are the tears of sociopaths, who can cry while feeling no emotion if it serves their interests. I wonder if anyone else noticed how swiftly Murdaugh could switch from emotional devastation to focused, factual recitation. At times it seemed as if two different people were on the stand. Waters, whose tenacity rivals Bubba's in pursuit of that unfortunate chicken, probably succeeded in pounding home the message that Alex Murdaugh can look jurors in the eye and lie to their faces, just as he did to the many victims of his money-stealing schemes. By extrapolation, he might even be capable of looking his wife and son in the eye and pulling the trigger. Both were facing their killer when first shot, according to forensic evidence. As for Murdaugh, his biggest problem is time - and he may be running out of it. He was at the kennels at 8:44 p.m. The murders were at approximately 8:50 p.m., according to the prosecution. Murdaugh left home for his mother's house at 9:06 p.m. How did he get back up to the house and take even a brief nap in so little time? Either Alex Murdaugh is one of the world's most talented unrecognized actors - and, therefore, one of the most highly functional sociopaths in criminal history - or he's just a conniving drug addict who bilked vulnerable clients of millions to feed his habit and underwrite a high life, and whose wife and son were brutally murdered by precision-trained assassins using two guns exactly like those owned by the Murdaughs. It was a high-risk gamble, indeed. - - - Kathleen Parker's email address is kathleenparker@washpost.com.