US ex-lawyer Alex Murdaugh admits he stole millions for drugs

The scion of a once-powerful South Carolina legal dynasty now facing murder charges has admitted to stealing $3.6m (£3.1m) in a single year.

Prosecutors allege that Alex Murdaugh, 54, killed his wife and son as part of a ploy to cover-up his crimes.

While he denies any involvement in their deaths, he has admitted to years of theft to feed a powerful drug addiction.

At its height, he said he took as much as 3,000mg a day of opiates.

Mr Murdaugh's wife Maggie, 52, and son Paul, 22, were fatally shot at the family's hunting estate in June 2021. Prosecutors believe that Mr Murdaugh killed them to conceal years worth of theft and misappropriation worth millions.

He faces 30 years to life in a state prison if convicted of the murders.

On the second day of an increasingly confrontational cross-examination in a South Carolina courtroom, Mr Murdaugh admitted to years of theft from clients and people he "loved and cared about", although he downplayed prosecutor Creighton Waters' suggestion that he was facing seemingly insurmountable financial woes in the days before his wife and son's death.

The crimes, he said, allowed him to fund an addiction to opiates that saw him take as many as 60 pills a day, amounting to $50,000 a week. In court, he described painful withdrawal symptoms when he attempted to stop using drugs.

"There were days I took more than that," he said. "Opiates gave me energy...whatever I was doing, it made it more interesting."

Mr Murdaugh added that "when you're doing the things wrong I was doing, you have all kinds of ways of justifying [it]."

"I'm not saying that makes it right," he told jurors. "But when I was doing it, and I was addicted as I was, there's all kinds of things...to be able to look yourself in the mirror. You lie to yourself."

In total, Mr Murdaugh is facing 99 separate financial charges totalling about $8.8m (£7.3m) in stolen funds.

Since Mr Murdaugh's cross-examination by Mr Waters began on Thursday, the two have repeatedly sparred over the prosecutor's repeated assertion that Mr Murdaugh's story is difficult to believe. On Friday, Mr Waters noted that this week marked the first time that Mr Murdaugh had admitted to stealing millions and lying to police about his whereabouts on the night of the killings.

Mr Murdaugh shot back with a claim that he had been "begging" to speak to prosecutors.

"Since at least January I've been trying to sit down with y'all and talk to y'all, and never, ever got a response," he said.

Now in its fifth week, the Murdaugh trial has dominated headlines in the southern part of the state, where the Murdaugh family have been prominent and wealthy members of the legal community for generations.

On Thursday, Mr Murdaugh admitted to initially lying by claiming he wasn't with Maggie and Paul on the night they died - an assertion that was later disproved by cell phone video taken at a kennel on their estate, as well as by car-tracking and other data.

Mr Murdaugh said the denials were a result of paranoia that stemmed from his addiction to opiates.

The cross-examination will continue through Friday afternoon, when Mr Waters is expected to pose direct questions about the deaths of Maggie and Paul.