Alex Murdaugh was found guilty of killing his wife and son in March
Tracy Glantz/The State/Tribune News Service via Getty, FOXCarolinaNewsTV/YouTube
Alex Murdaugh; Dr. Ken Kinsey
It was the shocking crime that started it all: Maggie Murdaugh, 52, and her 22-year-old son Paul were fatally shot near the dog kennels of their family’s South Carolina estate on June 7, 2021.
Their murders sent shockwaves through the community and led to the arrest of family patriarch Alex Murdaugh.
During the sensational six-week trial that began on January of 2023 and lasted for nearly six weeks, jurors were shown a slew of evidence, including a cellphone video featuring the voice of Alex that Paul had taken near the kennels — which placed the father at the crime scene around the time of the murders.
The disbarred lawyer was found guilty in March of the killings.
Dr. Ken Kinsey, a crime scene reconstruction expert who testified during the Murdaugh trial, talked to PEOPLE about what made him believe Murdaugh was guilty — and dismiss the defense’s theory that there were two shooters who killed Maggie and Paul and
Kinsey says the crime scene was “too messy” for two shooters to have been involved.
“[The defense] did everything to try and get away from Alex being the shooter,” he tells PEOPLE. “I teach pistols, I teach shotguns, I hunt. Knowing firearms the way I do, and working as many death scenes involved in firearms as I have, it is just too messy. I’ve worked a lot of hits. A lot. They just don’t do it that way.”
Kinsey referenced the fact that two guns — which prosecutors believed were owned by the Murdaughs — were used in the murders. “A hit team doesn’t come to your home and know that there’s two guns up in the corner of your feed room, use your guns,” he says.
Maggie Murdaugh Facebook Maggie and Paul Murdaugh
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Kinsey says the murder scene spoke of “overkill.”
“It’s the finality of it, win at all costs,” he says. “I mean, that’s overkill, but win at all costs.”
Related: Murdaugh Murders: A Complete Timeline of Alex Murdaugh’s Trial
Paul was shot twice, one of the shots to the head, with a shot gun inside a closet and Maggie was hit multiple times with a .300 Blackout rifle outside the kennels.
“If there would’ve been two people and someone would’ve started, it had to be a reason to start with the shotgun,” he says. “And the reason is because it is so catastrophic. It’s a scatter gun. It makes a big mess. For someone to start with the shotgun and leave the rifle. The rifle could have taken Ms. Maggie and Paul out. Tap, tap. It’s over. Clean. Two shots, four shots, just to be sure. But all the movement with Miss Maggie and just the massive amount of damage that you can do with a shotgun up close — that wasn’t orchestrated. That wasn’t planned, that wasn’t a team. You could have taken Ms. Maggie and Paul out and never get a drop of blood on you and been way more efficient than that.”
A hit team, he argues, wouldn’t “pick a bird gun and a big full size, 300 blackout rifle. It is just not efficient. It’s not clean. It gives you more room to leave evidence to leave a mess, for someone to hear you, for someone to see you. This was not that.”
Joshua Boucher/The State via AP
Alex Murdaugh
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Neither of the murder weapons were ever found.
Kinsey, who spoke at this year’s CrimeCon in Orlando, Fla., says he came to believe Murdaugh was guilty after he learned that Murdaugh waited close to 40 minutes to call his son Buster after he discovered the bodies.
“That’s what did it for me,” Kinsey says. “You think if I come home and found my spouse and one of my children dead, maybe I’ll dial 911. But immediately, especially if I believe there’s a group out here, assassinating my family, I’m going to call my surviving child and say, ‘Get somewhere safe. Get to law enforcement. Get to a police department, sheriff’s office somewhere. Don’t pack anything. Get there now.’ But he was texting and looking at the menu at Edisto Beach. … I knew then. That’s in my heart. I knew it then.”
Related: Alex Murdaugh Was Paying Up to $50,000 a Week for Drugs, His Lawyer Says
Kinsey, who recently retired as the Chief Deputy for the Orangeburg County Sheriff’s Office in South Carolina, says Murdaugh is “not a man.”
“If he’s a man, ‘con’ comes in front of it,” he says. “And look, he lied to everybody. He let a lot of people down. I can’t think of anything that you could do good that could erase that much bad. He can walk into heaven just like the rest of us. He’s got that grace, but he’s still got to go by man’s law. Still has to answer man’s law.”
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