"He didn't do it. I feel strongly he did not do it," Alex Murdaugh's lawyer Jim Griffin told Fox Carolina News. "Who kills a mother and a son unless they’re in some delusional state or some mind-out-of-body experience?"
Disgraced South Carolina lawyer Alex Murdaugh is a person of interest in the double homicides of his wife, Maggie Murdaugh, and son Paul Murdaugh, his lawyer Jim Griffin said in a bombshell interview. Griffin went on to say that the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) had named him a person of interest immediately after the pair were found dead of multiple gunshot wounds in their Colleton County hunting lodge, and had “never eliminated him as a person of interest,” he told Fox Carolina News earlier this week.
The allegations have never been confirmed by SLED, and the agency has not released any updates since the June 7 killings, except that there is no threat to the public.
Murdaugh has not been charged in the murders of his 22-year-old son or 52-year-old wife.
Griffin, however, says he does not believe Murdaugh killed Maggie and Paul. In fact, Murdaugh had not been home at the time of their murders, he said.
“He was sitting at the bedside of his mother at her house when the coroner says these murders happened,” Griffin said, adding that his mother, who suffers from dementia, had housekeepers in the home.
Griffin continued, “He had no motive to kill them. He loved his wife, he loved his son. The murder was done in the most brutal fashion with two separate weapons.”
He recalled text messages between Murdaugh and his wife, where they constantly tell each other “I love you” and “good night” when they were away from each other. “There’s no hint of domestic abuse,” he said.
But according to People Magazine, a law enforcement source they describe as familiar with the case said Maggie allegedly sought out a divorce lawyer six weeks before she was murdered, a source in law enforcement familiar with the case told . The source claimed it was related to the family finances, People Magazine reported.
"She didn't pay close attention to the family money or where it came from," the source said, according to People. "But now she was starting to look into it."
A spokesperson for the Murdaugh family, however, denied these claims.
"The most recent allegations by People Magazine regarding the state of Maggie and Alex Murdaugh’s marriage are totally inconsistent with what we have been told by friends and family members,” according to a statement to press. “Also, we have reviewed many years of text messages on Alex’s phone, and the conversations between Alex and Maggie portray a very loving relationship.”
“Who kills a mother and a son unless they’re in some delusional state or some mind-out-of-body experience?” Griffin said in the interview with Fox Carolina News. “There’s no reason for that to occur. He wasn’t someone who had an out-of-body experience.”
Murdaugh had been dealing with an opioid addiction for the last 20 years, Griffin said, and while it is possible he was on opioids at the time his wife and son were killed, "everybody who’s ever been around him in the last couple years he’s been on opioids and he was acting normal and he was acting normal that night."
Griffin also clarified that he had been hired to represent Murdaugh in “all these other things he did,” and not for a murder case. “I wouldn’t be so aggressive in defending him,” he said. “That would be grave injustice and I would stand up against any injustice that I see.”
