The man who bought the South Carolina home where former socialite Alex Murdaugh shot and killed his wife and son has claimed he has evidence proving the former lawyer is innocent.
Alex Blair of Rock Hill bought Murdaugh’s Islandton estate for $1 million in February and has since embarked on a top-to-base renovation of the house, including an addition to the side of the property. Real estate agent reports.
He now says he is in possession of the kennel door and window containing bullet holes from the June 2021 shooting, which he says proves Alex Murdaugh did not kill his wife, Maggie, or their son. Paul.
The South Carolina patriarch received two life sentences without parole last year for his murders, after crime scene experts determined he ambushed Paul at the kennels and shot him twice before shooting Maggie. five times even as she fell to her knees.
But Blair, whose kennel was torn down but kept the door, said the location of the bullet holes suggests Murdaugh did not kill them.
Alex Blair, of Rock Hill, bought Murdaugh’s Islandton estate for $1 million in February
Since then, he has embarked on a roof-to-base renovation of the house, including an extension to the side of the property.
“(Murdaugh) is a big man, he was even bigger back then, and he’s too big for the bullets to go through him the way they did,” he explained.
“Maybe it was karma for other things he did,” Blair said of Murdaugh’s conviction. “But I don’t think he killed them.”
He went on to point out that many of the locals who live on the street where Moselle Estate House is located agree with him that the former lawyer is not guilty of the murders, and said that the reason he bought the property was because “he didn’t “I don’t think (Murdaugh) did it.”
Blair also revealed that she has a set of keys and keychains that once belonged to Maggie.
He said he will keep them in case Murdaugh’s surviving son, Richard ‘Buster’ Murdaugh, ‘wanted to get it back… to have something of his mother.’
Murdaugh received two life sentences without parole last year for murdering his wife, Maggie, and son, Paul.
Murdaugh has remained adamant that he did not kill his son Paul with a shotgun or his wife Maggie (both circled) with a rifle.
Following Murdaugh’s arrest, two businessmen purchased his 1,700 Islandton hunting lodge for $3.9 million in March 2023.
But a few months later, James Ayer and Jeffrey Godley decided to split the land and put the house and its surrounding 21 acres back on the market for $1.95 million.
Godley explained at the time that he and Ayer had no use for the house itself and were only interested in the land, which they planned to use for hunting, farming and timber.
He noted that they were both locals to the area and wanted to make sure the home buyer was a good neighbor.
“I’m a next-door neighbor, and our house is about a mile from this house,” he said.
‘We are looking for a new neighbor to enjoy this beautiful house and land.’
The listing at the time suggested the house could be used as a “residence or family compound,” a site for “equestrian activities,” a possible “hobby farm” or a “weekend retreat destination.”
Maggie’s body was found a few meters to the right of a doghouse, while Paul’s was next to the door at the end of the kennels.
Murdaugh claims he was in the main house watching television at the time the State says Maggie and Paul were shot to death.
Blair, a father of two, now plans to use the house as a “secondary residence” as he owns a hunting cabin just 20 minutes from the family farm.
He explained that he wanted to make sure that any other houses he adds to his property portfolio are close enough to the house so that his family can move between the two without disrupting his children’s lives too much.
He said he hopes the work he is doing on the residence will remove the “bad stigma” surrounding it, and noted that he wants to change the narrative of the home in a “positive way.”
Since purchasing the property, Blair has installed a pond on the land, put up horse fencing, torn down the kennels, and torn down and replaced Murdaugh’s private airplane hangar.
He also hired two land managers to ensure the property remains “clean and organized” and is renting a greenhouse on the land to a local area sheriff’s deputy.
When asked about his decision to extend the house with an extension, Blair said it was simply his “obsessive” desire to make it “symmetrical.”
That is now the last part of the house that needs to be completed, and Blair hopes it will be finished by mid-November.
Maggie, Paul, Alex and Buster Murdaugh with their dog Bubba in a family photo obtained by DailyMail.com
He added that anyone would be hard-pressed to find a property without any defects in South Carolina’s Lowcountry.
“Every property in the Lowcountry has a story,” Blair said.
“The bad thing about our state is that slaves were trafficked here,” he continued.
‘Bad things have happened at all the properties. But you have the choice to focus on the negative or create a positive narrative. And that’s what I want to do.’
The murders of Maggie and Paul Murdaugh shocked South Carolina, where the family was well known as a political and legal dynasty.
Family members had served as attorneys and district attorneys for the Low Country region for 85 consecutive years.
But prosecutors claimed that on the day of the murders, Murdaugh had been faced with about $792,000 that had “gone missing” from a recent case.
In the following months it would be revealed that he had stolen more than $10 million from clients and partners of his company.
Jurors also heard gruesome evidence of how Paul’s brain was blown out the back of his head by a close-range blast of steel pellets from a 12-gauge shotgun.
He then shot his wife Maggie with a .300 Blackout rifle from yards away, with gunshot wounds to the thigh, wrist, torso and head.
The last shot was fired in the back of the head while she was lying face down on the ground when she was already dead.
Prosecutors also claimed that body camera footage showed Murdaugh lying about the last time he saw his wife and son.
He then paid his former drug dealer and accomplice to shoot him in the head so his surviving son could claim insurance payout, prosecutors said.
Still, Alex has strenuously denied executing his wife and son and sensationally took the stand to defend himself against the advice of his own lawyers.
He cried as he admitted to the jury that he had lied about being at the crime scene minutes before they were killed, but attributed his paranoia to a crippling opioid habit and distrust of police.
Murdaugh said, “I would never intentionally do anything to hurt any of them.” Ever. Never,” he sobbed. “I never shot my wife or my son.”
Murdaugh claimed he found the bodies of his wife and son after returning home from a visit to his parents.
His lawyers have since attempted to appeal his conviction, arguing that court clerk Becky Hill told jurors “not to be fooled by him” in an attempt to secure his conviction so she could make money from a book about the case.
His allegations of “unprecedented jury tampering” were rejected by Judge Jean Toal in January, but that decision has now been overturned by the Supreme Court, which will now consider whether he should be granted a new trial.
However, even if Murdaugh is ultimately granted a new murder trial, he will still serve 40 years in prison for stealing millions of dollars from his law firm’s clients, a punishment that will be served concurrently with his 27-year sentence. years for their separate state fraud convictions.
The 40-year sentence will be served consecutively to the disgraced lawyer’s two life sentences for the murder of members of his family.
