it has been a stunning night of criminal justice in america in a murder trial that drew national attention for the

wealth and local stature of defendant disgraced south carolina attorney alex murdaugh, and the depravity of his crimes, slaughtering his wife and son. the trial ended with murdaugh in cuffs, taken back to jail with sentencing tomorrow after a remarkably speedy verdict, three hours of deliberation. then this. >> guilty verdict. verdict guilty. verdict guilty. verdict guilty. >> guilty on all four counts, including two counts of murder. prosecutors, including south carolina's attorney general, spoke to reporters. >> justice was done today. it doesn't matter who your family is. it doesn't matter how much money you have or people think you have. it doesn't matter what you think, how prominent you are. if you do wrong, if you break the law, if you murder, then justice will be done in south carolina. >> creighton waters, the

prosecutor. what took three hours was a long time in coming. before we talk about details of the testimony and the verdict and what comes next, our randi kaye has a quick look at how we got here. >> i need the police. my wife and child have been shot badly. >> reporter: june 7th, 2021, alex murdaugh says he called 911 after finding his wife and youngest son dead at their hunting property known as moselle. >> did you touch maggie at all? >> i did, i touched them both. i tried to take -- i mean, i tried to do it as limited as possible, but i tried to take their pulse on both of them. >> reporter: 52-year-old maggie purchase murdaugh had been shot four or 5 times. paul murdaugh, 22, had been shot twice with a shotgun. >> she fell to the ground, and that's when the first fatal wound was delivered. his brain exploded out of his head, hit the ceiling in the shed, and dropped to his feet.

horrendous. horrible. butchering. >> reporter: both were murdered near the dog pennels on the family's property not far from the main house where alex murdaugh said he'd been napping at the time. that was a lie. >> was that you? on the kennel video at 8:44 p.m. on june 7th, the night maggie and paul were murdered? >> it is. >> reporter: murdaugh was backed into a corner. investigators had found this video on paul murdaugh's cell phone after his death. it was recorded at 8:44 p.m., just a few minutes before prosecutors say the murders occurred. alex murdaugh can be heard talking in the background. >> i was nowhere near paul and maggie when they got shot. >> reporter: despite his denials, prosecutors say murdaugh killed them to distract from his alleged financial schemes that were coming to light. he'd been confronted about missing funds at his law firm and his personal finances were about to be exposed at an upcoming court hearing. >> there were plenty of times

where i took money that i shouldn't have taken. >> reporter: murdaugh's defense team has burned back on the alleged motive, and this defense witness told the jury, after analyzing the bullets' triple digit tree, he determined someone much shorter than alex murdaugh, about 6'5", likely was responsible for killing his wife. >> it puts the shooter or whoever fired the weapon, if they were that tall, it put is them in an unrealistic shooting position. >> randi kaye is outside the courthouse. an unrealistic shooting position, he said. the prosecution came back with a very strong counter argument which we showed and a demonstration, actually in the courtroom. what stood out to you in all the testimony you witnessed and what's happened? >> reporter: certainly that kennel video was everything for the prosecution, anderson. when alex murdaugh has been denying for so long that he wasn't on it, then ten witnesses testified that was his voice, and finally he had sat there

listening to all that testimony, he figured he better get on that stand and say, okay, that's me. i think also that 911 call was really important. we heard a clip of it in that story. and that's important because mark ball, a longtime law partner of alex murdaugh's, you hear him on the 911 call, alex murdaugh saying, "i checked them both, i checked their pulse." he says that later to investigators. mark ball, a friend, a fellow law partner, testified murdaugh kept changing his story. one day he checked magfy girs, another day he checked paul first. that was critical because there were inconsistencies. the gps data that came in, gm onstar data being given to the prosecution late in their case showed that alex murdaugh arrived at the kennels just 20 seconds before calling 911. so the question is if he checked, ran to paul, ran to maggie, he tried to turn paul over a couple of times as he told the 911 operator, and later investigators, could he have done all of that in 20 seconds?

that was a lot for the jury, i think, because that was a real inconsistency. hard for them to comprehend how he could have done all that in 20 seconds once they saw that gps data. >> yeah, that's incredibly damning. i also want to play that lin 911 call. >> i need the police and an ambulance immediately, my wife and child are shot badly. >> are they breathing? >> no, ma'am. >> okay. you said it's your wife and your son? >> my wife and my son. >> what is your name? >> my name is alex murdaugh. >> it's so interesting. again, hearing this now, realizing he actually did, and the jury said, he killed these -- his wife and son. to hear him getting himself into the head space where he can make a call like this. and try to sound as authentic as possible. >> reporter: yeah, and you actually hear, if you listen closely on the whole call, as

i've listened to it many times, it answers -- when you call 911, it answers for a second and there's this pause. then all of a sudden you hear him start to cry. so it's silent, then he almost turns it on, if you really listen to the whole call. it's really fascinating. he also made all these calls before, speaking of phone calls that he was making that night, he made all these calls before he left the house and he was on the question to his mother's house, over and over, as the state said, trying to set up this alibi. he's busy at home, called him a busy bee on the stand. there was a lot of preparation, apparently, before this. >> yeah. randi, we'll come back to you. a few months ago, hbo max aired "low country: the murdaugh dynasty." i watched it before i started covering this. it is incredibly fascinating. it focuses on the murders, as well as the storied history and the deep influence of the murdaugh family in south carolina. saying before, his great grandfather, his grandfather,

his father, all were prosecutors in this area of south carolina. i'm joined by john dinerstein, the series executive producer. i've been obsessed with this documentary, talked to people endlessly about it, nobody wants to hear from me about it anymore. you've done an extraordinary job. we jessi we just saw video, the boat crash involving paul murdaugh. when you were -- do we actually have that video? let's show that then talk about it. >> paul was being really mean to a girlfriend, slapping her a time or two, spitting in her face. paul started acting out. i mean, he's just doing stupid stuff. like he starts driving the boat around in circles. >> this had ceased to be a joyride and had now become a very frightening concern for

their safety. >> take me to the nearest dock, you're going to keep driving like this, i'm going to get an uber from somewhere. and paul was like, this is my b boat. i'm not going to let you drive. so he's walking around and stuff, conner starts driving for a little bit, then paul, he stops conner and he's like, man, let me drive. >> some of them were huddled down in the bottom because of, "a," the way paul, the way he's acting, also the speeds they were going. this guy is angry, bitter. it became a battle that conner wanted to take him off the wheel, and he wouldn't have any of it. >> he was doing doughnuts and morgan was saying she was done with him, he started calling her

a bitch, "you're such a whore," all this kind of stuff. i saw the bridge coming. at the last second i screamed. >> wa you reveal in the documentary is that at the hospital where these kids were taken, alex murdaugh goes to the hospital with his father, the former prosecutor for the entire area, to try to manipulate the other people who were involved in the crash about who was actually driving the boat. >> yeah. i mean, nothing ever surprised me as we got into this. first of all, anderson, a huge fan of yours, thanks for having me on tonight. i would just like to say, yeah, nothing that we uncovered ever surprised us. every moment, everything that we shot or uncovered, it just made us think more and more that there was just something wrong here. and i was not surprised at all by the verdict either. >> the sheer number of dead bodies around this family in a

relatively short period of time, i mean, the housekeeper allegedly tripping down the stairs over the dog. alex murdaugh cheating the housekeeper's family out of an insurance payment of millions of dollars. cheating untold numbers of families, poor families who got $10,000 here, $20,000 settlements in insurance cases. he stole their money, too. a dead young man found in the middle of the road, made to seemingly, based on what i saw in your documentary -- it raises questions about whether it was just made to look like it was a traffic accident when it wasn't a traffic accident, he may have been dumped there. i mean, it's stunning. >> truly. and, you know, every time we'd uncover anything, it just kind of blew our mind. and, you know, this man, there was nothing that was out of bounds for him. i mean, conning the family

members of his housekeeper -- his dead housekeeper, getting them to sue the insurance company. and then to take that money from them. i mean, just everything that we uncovered. every single time anything came up, it just absolutely just showed sort of how awful this man was. >> and i call this -- earlier, you look at this family's history, it is sort of the oldest of old boy networks of the great grandfather, the grandfather, the father, all in power for 100 years in this county. it certainly seemed like he had a sense of impunity. they were the power, they could manipulate stuff. >> truly. everyone in that family thought the rules didn't apply. from paul and buster to the father to the grandfather to the uncles. they just thought that they could get away with murder. and that's why i was so relieved that in this case, they actually did not get away with it. >> were you surprised by the guilty verdict and the speed of

it? >> no, i wasn't. i mean, i was surprised because, you know, from my work as a producer of true crime and other documentaries, a lot of times the juries do get it wrong. but as soon as my colleague texted me saying, they're back after 2 1/2 hours -- i was pretty confident it would be guilty. typically to come to a guilty verdict, it's quick. the ones that are complicated are the ones where it takes a lot of time. so i wasn't surprised. i'm relieved. i would have been very, very disappointed had he been found not guilty. it would have been shocking because of the evidence and circumstances. but i've seen a lot of innocent people be convicted, a lot of convicted people -- i mean, a lot of guilty people found not guilty in my line work. >> were you surprised by the existence of the tape that paul murdaugh made at the kennels, and then by alex murdaugh's reversal on the witness stand?

>> yes. i was extremely surprised. we had heard things about that video, but we were never able to get our hands on it or find it or know that it was an actual thing. so that was one of the first sort of surprising things that came through as my colleagues here at the company were watching the trial minute by minute. >> right. rust dinnerstein, this country, "low country," it's really, really good. we're going to come back with our legal panel after a short break, be right back.

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before the break we spoke to the executive producer of "low country: the murdaugh din ynast" generations of when you daws, including his father, grandfather, and great grandfather. now includes -- he's now the convicted double murderer in the family. murdaugh's conviction after three hours of jury deliberation. a key piece of testimony as we mentioned a moment ago, the defendant on the stand admitting lies, including the lie he had continued to tell until that day he got on the stand about being at the scene of the crime. >> the second that you're confronted with facts that you can't deny, you immediately come up with a new lie. isn't that correct? >> mr. warner, as we've

established, i have lied many times. maggie asked me to go to the kennels with her. and i wasn't going to go. i said, "i'm not going to go." >> and how long after she left did you supposedly go down there? >> it -- it was very quickly. >> did you get out of golf cart to do that? >> i did. >> all right, you had to walk to where it was? >> well -- yeah. i mean, it -- a few feet. but i -- i did that, yes. >> all right, how long did that take? >> seconds. >> 8:46 now, how long did that take? >> seconds. >> just seconds, all right. what did you do after that? >> got back on the golf cart. did i get on the golf cart and leave that second? probably not. did i get on the golf cart and leave very quickly? >> you would agree with me that from 9:02 to 9:06, your phone finally comes to life and starts showing a lot of steps? >> i do agree with that. >> what were you doing? >> i was getting ready to go to my mom's house. >> that's far more steps in a

shorter time period than any time prior, as you've seen from the testimony in this case. so what were you so busy doing? going to the bathroom? >> no, i don't think -- i don't think that i -- >> get on a treadmill? >> no, i didn't get on a treadmill. >> jog in place? >> nope, i didn't jog in place. >> jumping jacks? >> no, sir, i did not do jumping jacks. >> what were you doing in those four minutes? >> preparing to leave for my mom's house. i know what i wasn't doing, mr. waters, and what i wasn't doing is doing anything -- as i believe you've implied -- that i was cleaning off or washing off or washing off guns or putting guns in a raincoat. and i can promise you that i wasn't doing any of that. >> so what you're telling this jury is that it's a random vigilante, the 12-year-old, two people, happened to know paul and maggie were both at moselle on june 7th, knew they'd be at

the kennels alone, knew you would not there be, but only between the times of 8:49 and 9:02 -- >> you've got a lot of factors in there, all of which i do not agree with, some of which i do. >> mr. murdaugh, are you a family annihilator? >> a family annihilator? you mean, like, did i shoot my wife and my son? >> yes. >> no. would never hurt maggie murdaugh, i would never hurt paul murdaugh. >> back now with our legal panel, including jury consultant jill huntley, randi kaye who was at the courthouse. in the closing statement the prosecutor really hammered the lies? >> reporter: absolutely, creighton waters, that was the theme throughout their whole case that he was a liar. during that closing argument, he used the word lie, lying, liar at least 100 times. that was a message to the jury that this guy lied to

investigators action he lied to us, he lied to prosecutors, he lied to clients, he lied to his family, he lewd to his law partners, and he is lying to you, you cannot trust what he's telling you from the stand. that was his message. >> you know, it's always fascinating. just to give you -- we talked about this a lot of times. one of the things that obsessed me is how -- paul murdaugh saying to the jury, "i promise you, i would never hurt" his wife and son. he hurt his wife and son -- he was taking -- he was spending $16,000 a week in some cases, allegedly, on oxycodone, all sorts of drugs. i mean, he hurt them in numerous ways. maybe he hadn't shot them earlier. but, i mean, he's been lying to them for their entire lives. >> yeah. he was counting on the jury drawing a distinction that he could admit to those lies, he could admit to having lied to them about using drugs, he could admit to lying to his clients and to his partners.

but that the jury would see a distinction between all of that. >> somebody who's a habitual liar turns to a jury -- jill, let me ask you, jury consultant. if a habitual liar turns to the jury, "i promise you this." why would anybody buy that? >> it's interesting. because usually what witnesses, when they admit things that are really bad about themselves or really bad that they did, it lends credibility to the rest of their testimony. but that apparently is not true when that then you're admitting is that you're a liar. so if you're a liar, you've just told the jury something that's really important for them to know. not only is he telling little lies, he's telling big lies. and the big, big lie is really, i think, what did him -- got him the guilty verdict. >> one of the interesting things that i think the prosecution did very well on that cross examination, when they went over the financial stuff with him, so you look your clients in the eye, is that right? you looked them in the eye, you knew you weren't being truthful, you took money from a

quadriplegic, didn't you? you took money from a teenager? you looked them in the eye, too. they were making the parallel between him looking at his clients and lying seamlessly just as he looked at the jury in an effort to connect and communicate with them and look them in the eye too. i think it was a very, very powerful and impactful part of the proogs's prosecution's case to make the parallel between the lies he's told all his life, looking in the eye, and the lies he told the jury. >> also this inventory. all right, did you lie to bob jones about the money? yes, i did. did you lie to him about this? well, not about that, but yes, about this. okay, did you lie to john smith about both things? yes, i did. so while this has nothing to do with the murder, they put him through the paces for how long, through how many names? just to show to the jury how many people he lied to about how many things, over what period of

time to implant, in the minds of the jury, lying is not of second nature to this individual, it's a go-to. >> mark, how damaging do you think the evidence about the financial crimes was? and we should talk about that. we'll take a break. we'll come back to that. how damaging do you think his financial crimes were to the jury? >> well, think i it was impactful because it does give that motive. it does sort of give the who this person really is. it was a weak connection between, i have financial problems, therefore, i will kill. but after all, that was exactly what the state had to get to. then had to bridge it that this guy will do anything. he will lie, he will do drugs, he will steal money, everything that he can do. it makes it a little bit more easy to accept for a jury that by the way, he will also kill. i think in that way, they bridged it pretty well. obviously they did because they got their conviction. but i do think it was

compelling. i did have a concern, anderson, we talked about it, that they may have been focusing on the dollars too much. but they had to because there was a certain substantial evidence on the murder side. >> are there issues for appeal? we'll talk about that. also, i want to play you probably one of the most powerful things that the prosecutor said in court. showed a little bit of, in randi's piece at the top of the hour -- the timeline that he constructed. when you hear the prosecutor's timeline of what the defense is saying, claiming was actually happening, you see how it's impossible that there was anybody else involved in this, or at least that -- it was impossible that alex murdaugh was not there when the killings took place. we'll be right back. ♪

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my blood pressure is borderline. garlique healthy blood pressure formula helps maintain healthy blood pressure with a custom blend of ingredients. i'm taking charge, with garlique. remarkably speedy justice in the alex murdaugh double murder trial, three hours of conviction to convict him of killing his wife maggie and son paul. a tight timeline of events by the prosecution, take a look. >> then what did you do? >> put the chicken up. >> how long did that take?

did you get out of the golf cart to do that? >> i did. >> you had to walk to where it was? >> well, yeah. i mean, it -- a few feet. but i -- i did that, yes. >> how long did that take? >> seconds. >> 8:46 now, how long did that take? >> seconds. >> just seconds? all right. what did you do after that? >> got back on the golf cart. >> what did you do after that? >> i left. >> you left. >> now -- >> jumped on the golf cart and left? >> that's what i was getting ready to say. did i get on the golf cart and leave that second? probably not. did i get on the golf cart and leave very quickly after that? i did. >> okay, yeah, i think you testified yesterday, "i got out of there." >> i did. >> why did you get out of there so quick? >> because it was chaotic. it was hot. >> you testified you went inside and the tv's on, right? >> i did go inside and the tv was on. >> okay. and you laid down, is that

right? >> i did. >> before you said you had been napping for an hour or so, napping that entire time. now you laid down on the couch? >> that's correct. >> all right. and maybe dozed for a second? >> maybe. >> according to your new story? how long did you doze? >> if -- if i dozed, extremely short time. >> you would agree with me that from 9:02 to 9:06, your phone finally comes to life and it starts showing a lot of steps? >> i do agree with that. >> what were you doing? >> i was getting ready to go to my mom's house. >> far more steps in a shorter time period than any time prior, as you've seen from the testimony in this case. what were you so busy doing? >> that's. going to the bathroom? >> no, i don't think that i when. >> get on the treadmill? >> no, i didn't get on a treadmill. >> jog in place? >> nope, i didn't jog in place. >> jumping jacks? >> no, sir, i did not do jumping jacks. i know what i wasn't doing, mr. waters. what i wasn't doing is doing

any anything, as i believe you've implied, that i was cleaning off or washing off or washing off guns or putting guns in a raincoat. and i can promise you that i wasn't doing any of that. >> back now with our panel. there is this other moment that he ticked through all the things that would have had -- that somebody would have had to have been there exactly right after he left in the few seconds or minutes that they would have had to have come with no guns and realizing that there would be guns there. and that they would have left and taken the exact same path that he took when he left? >> yeah, the prosecution established a really tight timeline. i think they had it down to about 17 minutes between when there's the cell phone video where the defendant's at the pennels with paul and maggie, then where -- i think the time when they -- when the defendant left moselle to go see his

mother. that was the tight timeline they were working with. i continue to think that was the most important evidence for the prosecution was to just pin down that timeline, which made it just seem utterly implausible that somebody else would have been able to get to this remote property, which maybe the jury visit helped establish how remote it was, get there at precisely that time paul and maggie would be alone at the kennels, knowing there would be weapons available. >> randi, how do you think that played when the prosecutor did that? >> i think it played really, really well with the jury. they had heard so much information, and they weren't allowed to take any notes during this trial. they put on an investigator from sled in the final day of the trial, of the state's case, at least. and that's the south carolina law enforcement division. he helped the jury understand and put the pieces together. a couple of inconsistencies as you heard there. kennels 8:44, then 8:47 left the kennels, 8:49 back at the house, that is the time that prosecutors believe maggie and

paul were dead, 8:49. he said he went to take a nap. but that was 8:49, he took a quick nap, maybe 12 or 13 minutes. because you heard him say, 9:02, his phone started showing steps. 283 steps in just four minutes. that is a lot of steps in just four minutes. then he said he left to go to his mother's house at 9:07. did he take a nap? he seemed to be sort of backtracking on that. then at 9:08, the gps data show his car slowed down at the very spot where maggie murdaugh's phone was found on the side of the road in the woods. that was a very, very critical timeline for them to spell out for the jury. >> so let's talk about possible issues for appeal. the financial crimes. there was a lot of the evidence admitted. is that a problem? or is that something the defense can use? >> it could be. so we always go through this at trials where one side is trying to admit evidence, the other side saying it's prejudicial, it's unfair, shouldn't be used. this case, all this financial

information. defense is saying, this is not a financial fraud case, this is a murder case, what's the relevance of this? not only that, it's prejudicial. the jury's going to get the view that he can't be trusted. well, then, of course what ends up happening is that the prosecution says, this is all motive. their whole argument was that he, they, being the prosecution, that alex murdaugh did this because the world was closing in. because he was running amok in finances. because he was about to be outed that his world was crumbling. and so he had to kill his wife and his son. if it goes to the issue of motive, it becomes admissible. the issue is whether it's so overwhelmingly damning and prejudicial as to be problematic. that will be a significant issue on appeal. >> do the trials for the financial crimes, do they continue now? >> they can. and i expect that they would. unless the defendant pleads guilty to them. he's already admitted under oath in this trial to having committed, i believe, all the crimes he's been charged with. so that would be very damning

evidence if you were to go to trial on those charges. it may be, depending on what the sentence is, that the prosecution, after consulting with the victims of those financial frauds, decides not to go forward. but, especially in light of the appellate issues that joey was referencing, one reason to go forward with the financial fraud charges would be on the chance that his conviction for the murders were overturned on appeal. >> mark kamara, do you think there's grounds for appeal? >> there's going to be a lot of grounds to try and get an appeal. however, the way the appellate court looks at this is, was it so prejudicial that it caused an unfair trial? they always do what's called harmless error standard. which is, was there so much compelling evidence that even if there was a mistake at trial, even if there was a prejudice as joey said to the defense, is it harmless because there was so much other compelling evidence? and with a three-hour verdict, with five weeks' worth of testimony, with everything that

we have now seen and looking through the prism of a guilty verdict, i think most -- i think the appellate court's going to say, there was some mistakes here, but it was harmless, and we're going to allow the conviction to stand. >> jury consultant jill huntley taylor, what are you most interested in hearing from the members of the jury? >> oh, great question. yeah, i mean, i think that i would be really curious to hear what was most important to them, how they reached their decision. you know, i think there was a lot of talk about motive, and i know they don't need a motive. but jurors usually do need a motive. and what did they think? what mattered to them? i'd be most curious to know what it was that crossed the line for them. was it the big lie? was it something more? was it a combination? and at what point, really, did they make their decision? >> that was one of the questions all along, the prosecution's motive that they put forward, well, he's trying to cover up this financial crime. that was always a question.

would the jury believe that was such a compelling motive that he would do what seems to be unthinkable? which is, point blank, point a shotgun and a rifle at your son and wife and pull the trigger repeatedly. >> i thought that was a really interesting part of the prosecution's rebuttal. the prosecutor said toward the end of it, we don't have to prove motive. i think i've proved motive, i think i know why he did it, which is he loved alex more than he loved paul and maggie. so this may have not forever solved his problems but put it off for a while, so he did what he needed to do for alex. i thought that was interesting. an acknowledgement that maybe the state's theory of motive wasn't perfect, but it was the best they could come up with, and at the end of the day they didn't have to prove motive. >> in this hbo max documentary, they have the prison phone calls between alex murdaugh and buster after he's incarcerated, obviously. and they are just pathetically sad. just the long silences.

they have very little to say to each other. i mean, the whole thing is just -- the whole thing is just tragic, obviously. >> look, there's no right to privacy in a prison. these calls are constantly recorded. it's interesting that that's part of it, because we get to see the dynamic. what's interesting to me, anderson, what i'm going to be looking for when the jurors are actually interviewed, they may very well say, look, we don't know if that was the motive, nor do we even give it that much weight. what we do know is, he's the guy that did it. i think at the end of the day, that's what matters. because every lawyer will tell you that motive just doesn't have to be proven, is not an element of the crime. yes, inquiring minds, jurors want to know. but you don't have to establish that. i want to hear what they have to say about that motive issue. >> maggie murdaugh's sister took the stand, marian proctor. i want to play some of her testimony. >> she loved her family, she loved her boys. >> what was your understanding

of maggie's intent for what they were going to do that night? >> i was under the impression they were going over to alameda to visit his parents. >> you encouraged her to go to moselle? >> i did. >> was that the last time you talked to her? >> yes. i couldn't believe it. i didn't think it was true. i requesasked him, "do you have idea who's done this? we have got to find out who could do this." and he said that he did not know who it was, but he felt like whoever did it had thought about it for a really long time. >> did that strike you as odd? >> i just didn't know what that meant. we were talk about the boat case. and he was very intent on clearing paul's name. >> what did he say?

>> he said that his number one goal was clearing paul's name. and i thought that was so strange, because my number one goal was to find out who killed my sister and paul. >> and alex, was he grieving greatly? >> oh -- terribly. >> people have -- >> we were all -- >> -- described him as being destroyed? is that -- would you agree with that assessment? >> yes. >> sister, marian proctor. alex was saying his number one goal was to clear paul's name. there is video from the hospital the night of the boat accident where a teenager has been killed and the evidence suggests that paul was at the wheel of alex murdaugh, with his father, going to the hospital, going room to

room, trying to get people to not necessarily talk to police, you know, here's a lawyer that we can get you, trying to kind of massage the whole incident to take paul out of the equation. >> i think that was part of the prosecution's theory of the gathering storm here. sort of overall. this sense that he cared not only about his finances but about his name and his legacy, his family's legacy in the community. so that story is consistent with the story you're talking about with respect to the boating accident. let's just get our family out of this incident. >> i also wonder how much the drug use -- i mean, i guess there is evidence that he was spending this amount of money on drugs. but how long did -- did the drug use predate his financial crimes? i mean, he was using the drug use, saying that's what the financial crimes were, i had a huge -- i was addicted to opioids. but which came first? it's not clear to me.

i'm not sure if that -- much of that was presented. randi, was there any -- was there a lot of testimony about that in court? >> reporter: there was a lot of talk of his alleged opioid use and this habit of his. and even the defense tried to use it as an excuse for him lying to investigators, that he was paranoid and he had been taking so many opioids that he just wasn't thinking right, he was acting like an addict. he even used the opioids as an excuse for when he was trying to explain when he showered that day and the whole clothing change on june 7th. he said he'd been in the field with paul during the day, in the afternoon, riding around the property, he was a lot bigger then, he was sweaty, that the opioids made him sweat a lot. so he definitely sprinkled that throughout his testimony. and the defense sprinkled that as well. but it's really unclear. we know the financial crimes have been going on for decades. so he apparently has been using

both. >> but i mean, when you look at, you know, what's happening in the days immediately before this, because we're still kind of searching around the motive that was introduced but not laid out, you know, in the smoking gun way. you know, you've got alex murdaugh's wife staying at the beach house, you know, which i think is her family's, but not living with him at home. you've got the son who finds the computer bag with the bags full of hundreds of pills. in his mind, you know, you may have -- you know, if my wife goes south on me and we end up in a divorce proceeding and she's going to testify as to what she knows, what she's heard, what she's seen, you know -- it's something you referenced a minute ago, his world is crashing in around him. and he's thinking, and i'm projecting here, he's thinking, how do i change these factors? what do i have to eliminate out of this equation? how will it affect my future? >> what's so stunning about that is, it's only i think a couple

of days -- i'll have to look up the exact amount of days -- after he has killed his wife and son, for that very reason, that somebody in his law firm stumbles across a check that was made out to him that shouldn't have been made out to him. and that starts an investigation internally within the law firm that they then start to uncover this unbelievable cavalcade of fraud. we're going to take a short break, pick up on the questions of the drug use and what it could mean for sentencing after another short break. what's it mean to be ever better? it's your customers getting what they ordered when they expect it. it's having an ecommerce soluti that scales with your business as you ow. it's using innovative technology that manages you inventory and orders.

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sentencing is tomorrow for alex murdaugh, one potential factor murdaugh's drug addiction, which he talked about on the stand. >> how many pills were you using a day? >> depends on a number of items, most importantly how strong the pill was. >> i mean, how many were you taking at one time? how frequent this this time period, let's say january to june. >> you know, there's a point in time -- and i'm not sure when it

was, i think it was well before that where -- and you have to understand this, this is something that i didn't -- i can still remember the first time i ever took an oxycontin. >> mr. murdaugh, can i ask you to answer my question. my question was how many were you taking a day during this time from january to june? answer that first, please, and if you want to explain i'm happy to let you do so. >> i'm not positive, and here's why. it's because over the years as i was saying the first oxycontin, one oxycontin made me literally made me sick, and that was when i was transitioning from hydrocodone to oxycodone. it made me sick because it's a really, really strong one, so one oxycontin pill was like ten hydrocodone pills. so but anyway, as i took more and more and over the years it just -- you know, you build up a

tolerance to pain pills, and so what might give me this energy, the reason -- one of the reasons i became so addicted is, you know, some people talk about pain pills is how they make them lethargic and, you know, where they can't do anything, and they feel -- opiates gave me energy. i mean, whatever i was doing, it made it more interesting. you know, it made me want to do it longer, you know to go on a drive, it made driving -- it just -- at the beginning, it made everything better. >> i want to talk about that with the panel. i just want to correct something, before the break, i said it was just days after the killings that the first -- the check was found by somebody in the law firm. that was actually three months after the killings. as jessica pointed out, the day of the murders, chief financial officer of the law firm confronted -- that's correct,

right? had a talk with murdaugh about what they had discovered already the day of the killing. how do you think the drug use played in the courtroom? >> you know, jessica and i were talking about whether that will be used as a mitigating factor in sentencing. in english what happens is when there's a sentencing, there's aggravating factors and mitigating factors. i think the sentencing is going to be about the nature and gravity of the offense. i think he spends the rest of his life in jail period. if the drug use factored into the killing, now that might be in my view something you can mitigate and say, hey, my client was on drugs and opioids and this and that, but he didn't own the killing at all. he just owned the opioids for a different reason, and so i don't think it assists him at all if that's the question. i think there's no way that he does not -- there's no way he leaves that jail for the rest of his life. that's my view on the sentencing. >> prosecutors pointed out he said he was -- he lied the night because he was high and pair

thy enjoyed. they also pointed out all during the investigation even after he stopped using allegedly, he was still lying. >> i don't see the judge considering the opioid addiction as being a mitigating factor respect to the sentencing. one of the challenges of having the sentencing at 9:30 a.m. tomorrow morning i don't think there's going to be an opportunity for either side to present much evidence or do an investigation of the circumstances of the defendant's opioid usage when it started and why it started to present any of that. from what the judge has seen during the trial, it's hard for me to imagine that the judge is going to view that as a particularly mitigating circumstance here. >> what are you expecting tomorrow? >> first of all, i thought it was amazingly quick that it's going to be done tomorrow morning. there's not a lot of time to do any time of a mitigation workup. presumably they'd done it before hand. but we have to remember the way this judge now looks at this case. he stays impartial until the verdict. now he has a verdict. there's no reasonable doubt left, there's no residual doubt left. this man intentionally and with

all malice aforethought and all these other words that we use about the intention that he used, the planning that he used, the premeditation, this judge gave us a hint of it, this judge is going to come on that bench tomorrow and say a jury of your peers found you guilty without any question. they considered it. thap they found you guilty. i find you guilty now following the verdict of the jury, and you're getting convicted because of the heinous nature of everything you did. when you kill your son and when you kill your wife you're going to prison for the rest of your life without question and no mitigation, evenin if there was the suggested mitigation of the opiates is going to change that sentence. >> randi, what do you think how drugs played in the courtroom? >> well, i think they understood. i think the jury understood that this was part of his lifestyle, but i don't think they took it as an excuse for possibly committing murder, which now we know they believe he did commit

a double murder. we say he lied and he was on these opioids and that's why he was lying, but he did one final interview with law enforcement in august just a couple of months after the murders, and he had already gone -- he was from that interview was while he was in rehab. he was clean, and he was specifically asked where were you, were you at the kennels earlier in the night, and he was still lying about it, so even after being clean he was lying about it. so he could no longer blame the opioids. >> he said on the stand he had been clean for several hundred days and was very proud of that. but he was continuing to lie all during that. thank you, jes cnn's coverage of alex murdaugh's verdict continues. alisyn camerota is back right afafter a short break. oh, will you pause it real quick? (mumbles)

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