is it a house or mobile home? it s a house. what is your name? my name is alex murdaugh. okay. did you hear anything or did you come home and find them? i ve been gone. i just came back. was anyone else supposed to be at your house? no, ma am. please hurry. we re getting somebody out there to you. . i should have known. alex, we just heard you say, i should have known.
This story. there s been a lot of tearing, sobbing even from the stand as he recounted finding those two bodies, especially it s been the case throughout the trial. so the jury is not seeing him weep for the first time. they have been seeing him weep for the past five weeks. it s clear that they are trying to appeal to the local folks in that jury that alex murdaugh was also a local person, that he was handy around a farm, that he is not speaking in a way of a polished attorney who would present an argument. he is talking like a regular person. i think that s on purpose. i think he is trying to be relatable, he is trying to be human. at this point in the testimony, he is talking about things he did that didn t make sense in the moments he was calling 911 to show a line of thought that he was under duress, he was upset and he was doing things
That, frankly, were inconsistent with the way he would have normally done them. that also is sort of bolstering the defense s case in the sense that they know these inconsistent statements he made to police are coming up on cross examination and they can say, look, he made inconsistent statements when it didn t matter. he was upset. he was under duress. he was taking opioids. that explains a lot of what was going on there. we will see how this all plays out during cross examination. there is going to be a lot for prosecutors to work with. he offered a ton of details just in this short period of time on the stand. they are going to have a lot to pick apart. i wouldn t be surprised to see this extend to tomorrow just because of that. danny, you are a defense lawyer. i want to play some. earlier testimony. alex murdaugh was trying to
This is a very rare and risky scenario where a defendant in a murder trial is taking the stand in his own defense. it s something we hardly ever see. perhaps something alex murdaugh s attorneys weren t favorable to. i paid careful attention to the language when they called him to the stand. they said, mr. alex murdaugh wishes to take the stand as to indicate this is his choice. he is the client. he is the defendant. ultimately, it does come down to him. he had a lot of explaining to do, which he has done this morning. he offered a lot of details. first off, starring right out of the gate, allegation that he shot his wife or his son. then continuing on to say that he lied to investigators about being at the crime scene very close in time to those murders because he was paranoid, because he didn t trust investigators and he felt this opioid addiction he had made him additionally paranoid and fearful. he said, once i started lying, i kind of had to keep going with