Murdaugh ‘Never Talked’ With Relative About Finding His Family’s Killer

The murders and the ensuing legal saga have drawn intense interest over the last year and a half, in part because of Mr. Murdaugh’s prominence in the region. Before being disbarred, he was a fourth-generation lawyer from a well-known family that controlled a regional prosecutor’s office and also ran a powerful law firm. As the killings went unsolved for more than a year before Mr. Murdaugh was charged, dozens of documentaries and podcasts were produced.

Prosecutors are expected to rest their case on Wednesday after calling more than 50 witnesses, many of whom provided technical testimony about gunpowder residue, phone records and other evidence. By contrast, Ms. Proctor’s testimony was the first from a close relative of the victims, and she gave an emotional account of the days around the murders.

On June 7, 2021, Ms. Proctor said, Maggie Murdaugh called her to say that Mr. Murdaugh’s father, Randolph, appeared to be close to dying, and that Mr. Murdaugh had asked her to drive from the family’s beach house to their hunting estate so that they could visit him. Ms. Proctor cried as she recalled that she had encouraged Ms. Murdaugh to go. Later that night, Ms. Proctor’s husband got a phone call telling him that Maggie and Paul Murdaugh had been killed at the estate.

“I didn’t think it was true,” Ms. Proctor said. “I said, ‘There has to be a mistake.’ I said, ‘There’s got to be some explanation. It just can’t be them.’”

In the following days, she said, she grieved alongside Mr. Murdaugh and his family, and he stayed frequently at her parents’ home, as well as with other family members. Ms. Proctor said she later thought it was odd that Mr. Murdaugh had not seemed to share her family’s fear that someone could be hunting the Murdaughs.

“I was scared for Alex and Buster,” she said, speaking about Mr. Murdaugh’s older, surviving son. “I felt like they needed protection. I think everybody was afraid. And Alex didn’t seem to be afraid.”

On cross-examination, a lawyer for Mr. Murdaugh tried to chip away at the narrative that Mr. Murdaugh’s behavior had been strange. In response to questioning from the lawyer, Jim Griffin, Ms. Proctor conceded that Maggie Murdaugh had also been intent on clearing her son’s name in the boat crash, and she also said that Mr. Murdaugh and his son had seemed to have “a very good relationship.”