problems that he had with his finances. admitting that he stole money from his law firm and clients. is that going over well? it s one of the plays they have. i m not in love with that as a motive. it s a reach in terms of saying, look, to create a distraction from these problems, he decided to murder his child and wife. i think that s a bit of a stretch. i m not in love with it. but i think the defense is doing a good job of addressing what prosecutor haves put out regarding his opioid addiction, regarding his financial situation as a means of basically dispelling the notion that he would have gone that far to try to commit a murder in order to distract. so that s something they have to do. i expected them to take the approach they have. so i m not surprised there. i just don t know how effective it will be. you have an issue with the defense questioning and the level of detail they went into with regards to his opioid abuse and detoxing from opioids, what
deliberate and he s off the path of normal human behavior. he was opening text messages and he googled a restaurant after he ses the lifeless bodies of his wife and son. he was trying to make the point he was try ining to call friend and they have to use his testimony to rebut some of the powerful both the specifics, the time line and that sort of character questions. it s called fronting. the durt in your story, these are facts that are bad for him. the defense has to be the one to put them on the record. if you give that to the prosecution and the prosecution controlling the narrative about calling the pizza place or googling things, it looks far worse to the jury. that s why they are trying to get it out there. but again, the prosecution, what they have is a motive in light of all those other crimes they are accusing him of having done. there s a motive. the problem is they don t have a way to link him to the actual murders. that s the biggest defect in the case thus far. the de
9:30 tomorrow morning, bret? bret: we will continue our coverage, jonathan, thank you. let s get analysis from defense attorney former prosecutor lori murray. lori, thanks for being here we heard he lied to authorities that night. we heard it from the defense questioning. what about that today? what else did you see? well, i mean, i think he had two different choices. he could have gotten in there and pled the fifth on every single thing they asked him or go from and own what he has done. the second one, obviously, the better choice for what he is facing. he went in with a complete mea culpa attitude except for i did all this i did everything you are saying i did but i did not kill my wife and son. and that s what i think he had to do today. bret: is that effective? at one point he said he would never cause harm purposefully, intentionally as he was crying saying to his wife and son and then he paused and said ever.
0 talked about that he found later in my office. and it was tight it was handwritten, ready to be tightened up by, you know because of the charges against paw, i kept everything close in the civil case, it was danny in his office that was doing it, and i had that document prepared, handwritten in the neatest handwriting that i could make because a secretary other than mine, a paralegal other than mine was going to be the person who was going to put that financial information into the final document, and that s the document that mark ball talked about that he found on my desk whenever it was that he found it. so that was what was going to be if necessary, what was going to be used thursday. alec, the jury has heard about testimony of you stealing client funds. did you do that? i did, yes. did you steal or divert that farris fee away from the law firm? i did. how did you get in such a financial predicament that led you to steal money that wasn t yours? you know, i m not
afternoon. they already checked them. they are dead? that s what it looks like. he pleaded not guilty to all charges. i want to bring in katie beck. she s there this south carolina covering this trial for us. and paul butler is with us. katie, you re there. take us inside the courtroom today. what more did we hear from that first witness? reporter: we certainly saw tears again from murduagh. now the credible nature of these detectives, we heard from it two now that responded to the scene. they both seem like they were calm and collected. this was not their first time. they secured the area. the defense questioning whether or not they secured the evidence enough. but some of the key questions asked on the stand, did they see