Witness found skull piece the ‘size of a baseball’ at Murdaugh murder scene
A former law partner of accused killer Alex Murdaugh testified Wednesday that police investigating the killing of Murdaugh’s wife and son did a shoddy job clearing the scene, even leaving behind a piece of a skull “the size of a baseball.”
Mark Ball told jurors he returned to the Murdaugh family’s sprawling South Carolina property the day after the June 7, 2021, murders of Maggie and Paul Murdaugh to find uncollected shotgun pellets, small clumps of tissue and the piece of skull.
“There was just a piece of Paul’s skull about the size of a baseball laying there,” said Ball, who is Alex Murdaugh’s former law partner.
“And there was a large bloodspot tissue out right off of the apron of that area right outside the feed room. That was there and it’s kind of like walking across the grave, just, it’s one of those things you just don’t do.”
Ball said investigators had done a poor job of securing the gruesome crime scene from the get-go.
He testified that he was one of more than a dozen of Alex Murdaugh’s former law partners and friends to walk around the bloody scene shortly after Maggie, 52, and Paul, 22, were shot to death.
Ball said he arrived about 45 minutes after Alex Murdaugh called 911, but before state law enforcement arrived.
Alex Murdaugh, 54, is standing trial for his wife and son’s deaths. He’s accused of killing Maggie with four or five rifle shots and Paul with two shotgun blasts near the dog kennel on the rural Colleton County property.
Ball said he was able to access the crime scene because police didn’t secure it. He and other non-law enforcement individuals were able to walk around shell casings and pools of blood near the site.
It was also raining lightly, Ball recalled, and the runoff from a roof had been falling onto Paul’s body as officers investigated, which a crime scene reconstruction expert later testified could have caused evidence to be lost.
“It’s a crime scene. You don’t want water dripping all over the place, but more importantly, I thought it was pretty disrespectful. Paul was a good young man and quite frankly it just pissed me off,” Ball testified.
“It really infuriated me,” he said, adding that “it was still a pretty raw scene.”
Once state officers arrived, Ball and the other meanderers were told to leave the scene and wait inside the Murdaugh home — which he said had yet to be investigated by responders.
Ball’s testimony comes one day after Murdaugh’s surviving son took the stand in his disgraced father’s defense.
Buster Murdaugh, 26, claimed that his father couldn’t have murdered his mother and brother and was instead “heartbroken” and “destroyed” after finding the bodies.
If convicted of the double murder, Murdaugh could face 30 years to life in prison.
He also faces at least 100 other allegations, including stealing from clients, money laundering, tax evasion and insurance fraud.
With Post wires
