EXCLUSIVE – SULLIVAN ISLAND, S.C. – Maggie Murdaugh's sister, Marian Proctor, was spotted for the first time Sunday morning since Alex Murdaugh was found guilty of fatally shooting his wife and son.
She was seen outside her home in Sullivan Island, South Carolina, wearing a pink sweatshirt with her hair pulled back in a ponytail – two days after her brother-in-law was handed two life sentences.
Murdaugh, 54, was convicted Thursday of gunning down his son, Paul, 22, and his wife, Maggie, 52, near the dog kennels of the family's hunting estate, known as Moselle, June 7, 2021.
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Proctor testified for the prosecution at his six-week double murder trial in Walterboro, South Carolina.
She broke down in sobs when she recounted encouraging her sister to visit Moselle the night she was killed.
"Maggie called me that day," Proctor told jurors in the Colleton County Courthouse. "Alex really wanted her to come home that night. She hadn’t planned on it."
Maggie didn't want to go home that evening. She often stayed at the family's beach house in Edisto, but Murdaugh's father was gravely ill and had just been admitted to the hospital.
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"I said, 'Maggie, Alex and his dad are super close, so that’s probably what you should do, go be with him if he needs you," Proctor testified of her last conversation with her sister.
Lead prosecutor Creighton Waters asked Proctor if she had pressured Maggie to go to Moselle.
"I did," she said, dissolving into tears. Proctor noted an odd statement that Murdaugh made after the slayings.
Murdaugh allegedly told her whoever committed the heinous crime had "thought about it for a really long time."
Waters in his summation suggested that Murdaugh was inadvertently referring to himself when he said this.
Proctor described her sister as a "really good person" and a "free spirit" who was devoted to her family.
"Buster and Paul were her world," she told the jury. "She didn't care what they were doing, she wanted to spend time with them."
