The man who purchased the South Carolina home where one-time socialite Alex Murdaugh shot dead his wife and son has claimed he has evidence that proves the former lawyer is innocent.
Alex Blair, of Rock Hill, bought Murdaugh’s Islandton estate for $1million in February, and has since embarked on a ‘roof to subfloor’ renovation of the house, including an extension to one side of the property, Realtor reports.
He now says he is in possession of the kennel door and window that contain bullet holes from the June 2021 shooting, which he claims proves Alex Murdaugh did not kill his wife, Maggie, and son, Paul.
The South Carolina patriarch received two life sentences without parole last year for their murders, after crime scene experts determined he ambushed Paul in the kennels and shot him twice before shooting Maggie five times even as she fell to her knees.
But Blair, who has had the kennel torn down but retained its door, said the placement of the bullet holes suggest Murdaugh did not kill them.
Alex Blair, of Rock Hill, bought Murdaugh’s Islandton estate for $1million in February
He has since embarked on a ‘roof to subfloor’ renovation of the house, including an extension to one side of the property
‘[Murdaugh] is a big man, he was even bigger back then, and he’s too big for the bullets to have gone through in the way they did,’ he explained.
‘Maybe it was karma for other things that he did,’ Blair said of Murdaugh’s conviction. ‘But I don’t think he killed them.’
He went on to note that many of the locals who live on the street where the Moselle Estate House is located agree with him that the former lawyer is not guilty of the murders, and said the reason he bought the estate was is because ‘I don’t think [Murdaugh] did it.’
Blair also revealed he has a set of keys and keychains that once belonged to Maggie.
He said he is holding on to them in case Murdaugh’s surviving son, Richard ‘Buster’ Murdaugh, ‘wanted it back… to have something of his mother’s.’
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 and his wife Maggie (both circled) with a rifle
Following Murdaugh’s arrest, his 1,700 Islandton hunting lodge was purchased by two businessmen for $3.9million in March 2023.
But a few months later, James Ayer and Jeffrey Godley, chose to carve up the land and put the home and its surrounding 21 acres back on the market for $1.95million.
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 in the area and wanted to ensure the homebuyer would be a good neighbor.
‘I am a next-door neighbor, with our home about a mile from this house, he said.’
‘We seek a new neighbor to enjoy this gorgeous house and land.’
The listing at the time suggested that the home could be used as a ‘family residence or compound,’ a site for ‘equestrian pursuits,’ a potential ‘hobby farm’ or ‘weekend retreat destination.’
Maggie’s body was found a few yards to the right of a doghouse, while Paul’s was by the doorway at the end of the kennels
Murdaugh claims he was at the main house watching TV at the time the State says Maggie and Paul were shot dead
Blair, a father-if-two, now plans to use the house as a ‘secondary residence,’ as he owns a hunting cabin just 20 minutes away from the family estate.
He explained he wanted to ensure that any other homes he adds to his property portfolio is 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 carrying out on the residence will remove the ‘bad stigma’ that surrounds it, noting he wants to change the home’s narrative in a ‘positive way.’
Since purchasing the property, Blair installed a pond on the grounds, put up horse fences, torn down the kennels and torn down and replaced Murdaugh’s private airplane hangar.
He also hired two land managers to ensure the the property remains ‘clean and organized’ and is renting out a greenhouse on the land to a sheriff’s deputy from the local area.
When asked about his decision to extend the home with an addition, Blair said it was simply his ‘obsessive’ desire to make it ‘symmetrical.’
That is now the final part of the home that needs to be completed, which Blair expects to be done 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 in South Carolina’s Lowcountry without a blemish.
‘Every property in Lowcountry has a history,’ Blair said.
‘One bad thing about our state is that slave trading happened here,’ he continued.
‘Bad things have happened on every property. But you have a choice to either focus on the negative or to 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 were well known as a political and legal dynasty.
Members of the family had served as solicitor and district attorney for the Low Country region for 85 consecutive years.
But prosecutors claimed that on the day of the murders, Murdaugh had been confronted about $792,000 that had gone ‘missing’ from a recent case.
In the subsequent months it would be revealed that he had stolen more than $10m from clients and partners at his firm.
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 buckshot from a 12-gauge shotgun.
He then shot his wife Maggie with a .300 Blackout rifle from yards away, with bullet wounds to her thigh, wrist, torso and head.
The final shot was fired into the back of her head as she lay face down on the ground when she was already dead.
Prosecutors also claimed that bodycam footage showed Murdaugh already 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 an insurance payout, the prosecutors said.
Still, Alex has fiercely denied executing his wife and son and sensationally took the stand to defend himself against his own lawyers’ advice.
He wept as he admitted to jurors that he had lied about being at the crime scene minutes before they were slain – but blamed his paranoia brought on a crippling opioid habit and a mistrust of the police.
Murdaugh said: ‘I would never intentionally do anything to hurt either of them. Ever. Ever,’ he sobbed. ‘I didn’t shoot my wife or son, ever.’
Murdaugh claimed he found the bodies of his wife and son after returning home from a visit to his parents.
His attorneys have since tried to appeal his conviction, arguing that court clerk Becky Hill told jurors ‘not to be fooled by him’, in a bid to secure his conviction so she could make money from a book about the case.
Their claims 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 retrial.
Yet even if Murdaugh is eventually granted a new murder trial, he will still serve 40 years in prison for stealing millions of dollars from clients of his law firm, a punishment that will be served at the same time as his 27-year sentence for his separate state fraud convictions .
The 40-year sentence is to be held consecutively with the disgraced lawyer’s pair of life sentences for the murders of his family members.
