Ashleigh Banfield is the host of ‘Banfield’ airs weeknights at 10 p.m. ET on NewsNation
It was the cell phone of Paul, Alex Murdaugh’s murdered son, that exposed the smoldering deception his father had been telling for a year and a half.
Alex, a 54-year-old disgraced lawyer, had claimed he was nowhere near his doomed wife, Maggie, 52, and child, Paul, 22, when they were brutally gunned down on their sprawling, lowland estate in South Carolina in June of 2021.
And ever since that fateful night, Alex claimed, to anyone who would listen, that he was napping in the main house and had no idea of the horrors unfolding 1,150 feet away outside the family’s kennels.
But it was the stupidest, most damaging lie he could have ever told.
Because an accidental video Paul filmed of one of the dogs in the kennels featured Alex Murdaugh’s high-pitched, but haunting, voice in the background.
If there’s one thing the Alex Murdaugh murder case has taught us, it’s that star witnesses lurk in almost everyone’s back pocket.
In the video, Alex could be heard kibbitting with Maggie over a chicken on the property. And it proved, beyond reasonable doubt, that Alex was there, in the kennels, minutes before his family was exterminated.
The electronic evidence presented to the court was so clear and convincing that even Alex on the witness stand had to reverse course and admit after 20 months that it was indeed his voice on tape.
If there’s one thing the Alex Murdaugh murder case has taught us, it’s that star witnesses lurk in almost everyone’s back pocket.
The mountain of electronic data paraded through this South Carolina courtroom certainly helped seal Alex’s fate.
A deliberating juror told Good Morning America that this was the moment – at that moment – when he decided that Alex was guilty.
But those weren’t the only electronic records that proved crucial to putting Alex Murdaugh behind bars for the rest of his life.
The mountain of electronic data paraded through this South Carolina courtroom certainly helped seal Alex’s fate. And it is this kind of data that almost every one of us carries with us in our daily lives.
It was astonishing to discover during this trial that a simple mobile phone will record almost every movement of its own movement for posterity when the device’s backlight is activated.
A record is also made of any change from portrait mode to landscape mode when a phone is lifted to face.
We all know it happens. We just didn’t know that all those moves are tucked away, in a little memory vault deep inside the device.
And so, when experts testified that Maggie’s phone moved after her death, it gave us a striking glimpse into what might have been going on.
The expert’s testimony suggested that Alex was holding her phone in one hand and his phone in the other, calling her to leave a fake alibi message.
As a former lawyer, he may have tried to fool would-be investigators into thinking he was calling her from the main house to tell her he was on his way to visit his elderly mother.
But when dead Maggie’s phone was lifted up, the screen changed from landscape to portrait. You could almost imagine Alex fiddling with the phones in his hands.
The problem for Alex was that Maggie’s phone registered the movement for two seconds for Alex’s call came in. It sure looked like he was looking at her phone to confirm that his call was received.
Also shocking was the realization that the phone records every step you take, even if you’re not plugged into and tracking a fitness app.
Alex’s lie that he slept while his family was slaughtered was disproved by the frantic 283 steps the electronic spy recorded in his pocket.
Alex, a 54-year-old disgraced lawyer, had claimed he was nowhere near his doomed wife, Maggie, 52, (centre) and child, Paul, 22, (second from right) when they were brutally beaten. shot on their sprawling, low-lying South Carolina estate in June 2021.
The electronic evidence presented to the court was so clear and convincing that even Alex on the witness stand had to reverse course and admit after 20 months that it was indeed his voice on tape.
And dead Maggie’s phone seemed to record his steps, too. That data was consistent with the prosecution’s claim that Alex hurriedly hosed down and washed away all traces of blood after shooting his loved ones.
When the smartphone connects to a vehicle’s Bluetooth, another tiny digital witness is born, becoming yet another window into criminal behavior.
Suburb Alex recorded his 80-mph sprint down dark and winding country roads, something he assumed he was doing in secret.
When his GMC slowed down, right where Maggie’s phone had been found in the woods, it was hard to believe he hadn’t.
Finally, an innocuous Snapchat video Paul recorded less than an hour before the murders, showing his father busy with a stubborn sapling that had just been planted, provided yet another clue.
The clothes Alex was wearing in the video were not the clothes he was wearing when he claimed to “discover” his dead family just hours later. And no one could find the button-down and chino he was wearing in the video.
Surprisingly, the only electronic spies not addressed in this trial are now almost standard evidence in most other courtrooms: doorbell cameras.
There wasn’t one in the main house and certainly not one near the kennels.
Normally, those cameras are everywhere else, tracking every drive, walk, or other innocent (or sinister) movement.
A real network of neighborhood cameras was the basis of the investigation into Bryan Kohberger and his White Elantra. The footage from Kohberger’s car eventually led to his arrest.
Prior to joining NewsNation, author and broadcaster Ashleigh Banfield was a legal analyst and broadcaster for Court TV, host for “Legal View with Ashleigh Banfield” on CNN, and correspondent for ABC News.
His vehicle was captured around 4 a.m. while driving through a neighborhood in Moscow, Idaho, which is about the time four innocent University of Idaho students were stabbed to death in their own home.
This proliferation of electronic witnesses and their increasing importance in US jurisprudence cannot be underestimated.
The human eyes of decent, law-abiding citizens can’t see into all the dark corners where criminal behavior proliferates, but these electronic eyes are a powerful and ubiquitous substitute.
Electronic and video data have become the primary tools of criminal investigation since fingerprints, black and white photography and DNA became ubiquitous in court.
So the next time someone says “it’s just a circumstantial case,” it’s good to note that this kind of evidence is circumstantial evidence, and it’s downright convincing, because it has the power to dispel all reasonable doubt .
Increasingly, it can be considered even more powerful than direct evidence as we learn more and more about the fallibility of eyewitness accounts.
There is no doubt that phones and gadgets have become essential in modern life.
Now, it turns out, they have become essential tools for avenging death.
Ashleigh Banfield is the host of “Banfield” which airs weekdays at 10 p.m. ET on NewsNation. Click here to find NewsNation near you.
