I belatedly stumbled upon this interesting case, in which a notable and lauded (in South Carolina) lawyer, who was the scion of a lawyering dynasty that had dominated that part of the country for over a century, was convicted of shooting his wife (Maggie) and one of his sons (Paul). The case had little or no coverage here in the UK, which is why I only came upon it belatedly.
It appears that there were four particularly critical pieces of evidence that condemned Alex Murdaugh - and each of them involved involved elements of technology that Murdaugh clearly had not understood or considered:
1) He'd claimed in all his police interviews that he last saw Maggie and Paul at dinner (which finished around 8:30pm), and that after dinner he'd "taken a nap" for some 30 minutes while Maggie & Paul went down to the kennels on their sprawling estate (which were situated about 300 yards from the house). He claimed that he woke up from his nap at around 9:00pm and decided to drive over to see his sick mother at his parents' house, about 10 miles from his estate.
However.... Paul had - unbeknown to Alex - made a Snapchat video to send to his friend, because his friend's dog was in the Murtaugh kennels, and the dog had injured his tail in some way. Paul took a Snapchat video of the dog's tail to send to his friend. And in the background on the video - which was taken at around 8:45pm - you can hear Maggie talking......
and also his father Alex. Several people testified that they were 100% positive that the voice belonged to Alex (and it's completely obvious when you hear the relevant audio alongside hearing Alex speak).
So the Snapchat video proved that Alex had lied about taking a 30-minute nap after dinner: the video proved that he'd been down at the kennels with Maggie and Paul just minutes before they were murdered (the police could nail down the time of death with high accuracy by analysing the victims' iPhones).
2) Maggie's iPhone was thrown into scrub land just off a road outside the Murdaugh estate. Alex was unaware that his car recorded all sorts of telemetry data, including the car's location/speed/configuration. And he was obviously also unaware of how much data (precise times, waking from sleep, movement, position, orientation) iPhones record.
Because, as it turned out, Maggie's iPhone was thrown from the road at precisely the same time as Alex's car passed that precise spot on the road, on his way to his parents' house. Ooops.
3) Alex told police that he returned from his parents' house to his estate at just after 10;00pm, and that - upon realising that Maggie and Paul were not in the house and that they were not answering their phones - he drove down to the kennels, where he "discovered" their bodies. He said that he'd gone to both bodies (which were about 25 feet apart), checked both pulses, and turned Paul's body over. He then called 911.
But..... Alex's car recorded the precise moment when his car was put into "Park" once he reached the kennels. And there was a similarly precise timing on when he made the 911 call. And there were only 19 seconds between those two events. Clearly this didn't afford Alex enough time to get out of his car, walk to the bodies, check each body in turn (including walking between the two bodies) and then call 911.
4) Alex claimed to police that Paul's iPhone had "slipped" out of Paul's rear jeans pocket when Alex turned his body over. But Paul's iPhone showed that the phone had clearly been manipulated: the orientation changed twice between landscape and portrait, in a manner inconsistent with it simply falling out of Paul's pocket. Furthermore, the phone had been woken from sleep - again in a manner inconsistent with it falling out of the pocket.
What had almost certainly happened is that, upon returning to the kennels shortly after 10:00pm, Alex had not done what he claimed to police: rather, he had gone straight to Paul's body because he realised he needed to check Paul's phone. He took the phone out of Paul's back pocket and woke it from sleep, and saw several messages from the friend whose dog was in the Murdaugh kennels with an injured tail.
This theory is bolstered by the fact that Alex repeatedly tried to call this friend of Paul's (who was also a close friend of the whole Murdaugh family), even as the first police responders arrived, and even before calling family members or friends/partners. And the clear inference is that he was desperate to find out what the friend did or did not know about what had taken place that evening.
There were many other damning polnts, including the fact that Alex had changed his clothing between around 7:45pm (when he was captured on another Snapchat video of Paul's) and the arrival of the first police at around 10:15pm; the fact that police could convincingly demonstrate that the two guns used in the murders (the shotgun which killed Paul, and the assault rifle which killed Maggie) a) were guns which belonged to the Murtaugh family, and b) were now missing; the fact that his car and phone data showed that he'd walked around outside his parents' house, having parked round the back of the house, where there were adjoining woods (he almost certainly dumped the clothes he war during the murders, plus the two guns he used, somewhere in those woods, then returned a day or two later to dispose of them properly); the fact that he'd just been exposed as having stolen millions and millions of dollars from his law firm and from clients; and plenty more besides.....
Anyhow, he was ultimately (justly) convicted, and sentenced to two consecutive whole-of-life sentences. His downfall was as stunning as it was deserved.
I recommend watching the lead prosecutor's closing argument, which sets out the case clearly and passionately. The lead prosecutor was an extremely impressive courtroom performer, and frankly there was no chance of the jury acquitting (some of the jurors have made the point that they found the prosecutor as compelling as the case itself). And there is plenty more video available - from Alex's very first police interview (which took place in a police car on the Murtaugh estate only a couple of hours after the murders, and which was recorded on dashcam) through to the whole of the trial and the sentencing.
It's a long video (three hours long....) but I was so drawn in by it that I watched it in installments:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWIHjaXl4io
