Alex Murdaugh Trial: Maggie’s Sister Testifies

The judge did, however, allow Proctor to testify about how she and other family members had been living in fear — and what eventually changed that. “We were mostly afraid for Alex and Buster, but we didn’t know the motive behind the killings. We thought that it probably had something to do with the boat case, and we thought that up until September,” Proctor said. “And then things started to change a little bit.”

In September 2021, months after the killings, Alex’s law firm partners forced him to resign when they discovered he’d been stealing from them and their clients. The very next day, he allegedly hired a contract killer to fatally shoot him by the side of an isolated road so that Buster would receive a multimillion-dollar insurance payout. But the plan failed when he was only slightly injured by the shooter, and Alex and his alleged accomplice were soon charged with insurance fraud. 

Proctor said that when she first learned Alex had been shot, she feared the Murdaughs were being picked off one by one. 

“I had just lost two of the family members and I felt like they were being targeted at that point,” she said. 

“Over the course of a few weeks, we were still on high alert, worried for Buster, but at that point, information started coming out about some things that Alex had done financially that we had no idea about,” Proctor added.

Later, Proctor said she’d learned the story Alex had initially told authorities about the roadside shooting — that he’d been shot by an unknown assailant as he changed a tire — was not true. 

Proctor was also the first witness to testify that both Maggie and Paul had been concerned for a long time about Alex’s usage of prescription pills. Maggie even called Paul her “little detective,” Proctor said, because she tasked him with finding any pills Alex might be hiding. 

Proctor said that Alex had told her he had not been with Maggie and Paul at the kennels prior to the killings, but prosecutors have repeatedly shown a video filmed by Paul on his cellphone that they say captures Alex’s voice at the kennels shortly before the murders.

Testifying immediately after his wife on Tuesday, Barton Proctor became the latest witness to testify that he could identify the voices of Paul, Maggie, and Alex in the video.

“How sure are you?” Waters, the prosecutor, asked him. 

“100%,” he responded.