Alex Murdaugh’s younger brother took the stand on Monday, tearfully describing how he cleaned the gruesome crime scene the morning after his sister-in-law and nephew were murdered in June 2021.
“No mother, father, aunt, or uncle should ever have to see and do what I did that day,” John Marvin Murdaugh, the defense team’s final witness, told Colleton County jurors on Monday about his decision to clean his brother’s hunting estate. “It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever been through in my life.”
Prosecutors say that Paul Murdaugh was fatally shot outside the feed room near the dog kennels of the South Carolina property on June 7, 2021—and that his mother, Maggie, was killed nearby. The next morning, John Marvin told jurors while several people were at the property’s main house, he felt the need to go down to the crime scene to see for himself “what had gone on and just kind of take it in.”
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Noting that investigators had released the scene hours earlier and that he received permission from another law enforcement friend, John Marvin noted that the crime scene “was not cleaned up” when he arrived and that he could still see where Maggie’s body had been found. He added that the feed room was still covered with brain fragments, pieces of Paul’s skull, and lots of blood.
“I felt like it was the right thing to do. I felt like I owed [Paul]. And I just started cleaning,” he said about his decision to clean the feed room, while Murdaugh looked down and began to cry several feet away at the defense table. “In my mind, I told Paul I loved him...I promised him that I'd find out who did this to him.”
When asked by defense attorney Jim Griffin if he ever found out who killed his nephew and sister-in-law, John Marvin replied: “I have not.”
John Marvin was the last witness to testify before the defense rested on Monday. He was also the second family member to testify on behalf of Murdaugh.
Prosecutors allege that Murdaugh, who has pleaded not guilty to four charges, murdered his family in a deranged scheme to garner sympathy and halt questions about his years-long scheme of stealing money from his law firm and clients. The defense, however, has argued that Murdaugh had no motivation to murder his wife and son that several witnesses have described as his top priority.
“All marriages, I’m sure, have hiccups here and there, but I’m telling you it was a good marriage,” he said. “Anything that the boys were doing, Alex wanted to do.”
Buster, Murdaugh’s only surviving son, briefly took the stand last week about his nuclear family dynamics, noting that while the four of them were close there were tensions surrounding his father’s decades-long addiction to opioids.
This is not the first time John Marvin has spoken out in defense of his older brother. Alongside his other brother, Randy, he participated in a Good Morning America interview just days after the June 7, 2021 murders where John Marvin said Paul received death threats for his role in a 2019 drunken boating accident that killed a teenage girl.
Law enforcement agents who testified in the trial also noted that Murdaugh also touted the theory that the boat crash was the possible motivation for the murders moments after they were called to the scene.
“I didn’t think it was a credible threat—if it was, I would have tried to do something or notify someone,” he said in the 2021 interview. “But I guess maybe I made a mistake.”
Murdaugh also took the stand on Thursday and Friday, revealing that he lied to law enforcement about his whereabouts the night of the murder and admitting to stealing from clients and his law firm for years. He also admitted to his two-decade opioid addiction, noting he regularly took more than 60 pills a day—including oxycontin and oxycodone.
“Opiates gave me energy,” Murdaugh said. “Whatever I was doing, it made it more interesting. It made me want to do it longer. It made everything better. I took so much just to not backslide.”
John Marvin told jurors on Monday that he had not been aware of Murdaugh’s opioid addiction until after the murders, when his brother attempted a botched suicide scheme in September 2021 so that Buster would inherit his $12 million insurance payout. On Thursday, Murdaugh briefly described the roadside shooting, saying that he intended to die that day.
“I’d never seen anything like it. I’ve seen television shows talking about the leg twitching and the squirminess,” John Marvin told jurors about taking his brother from an Atlantic detox center after the Labor Day shooting to rehab. “He messed himself. He had diarrhea. He just couldn't control it. I'm not talking about in the restroom. I mean, in his pants.”
