Ellen Riemer

Ellen Riemer performed the autopsies of Paul and Maggie Murdaugh and testified as an expert in forensic pathology. She identified Paul's cause of death as shotgun wounds of the head and chest and Maggie's as multiple gunshot wounds, classifying both deaths as homicides.

Riemer described Paul's first shotgun wound as close-range and survivable. She concluded that the fatal wound entered at his left shoulder and traveled through his neck and head, while qualifying that path as her most likely explanation rather than the only possible one. She described five wounds to Maggie from at least four rifle shots, including two fatal paths involving the head, but did not present her account of the shooting sequence as a fixed crime-scene reconstruction.

The defense tested the limits of those opinions by establishing that Riemer had not reconstructed the scene and could not determine the weapon's height, a fixed shooter angle, the ammunition classification, or the precise mechanism by which most of Paul's brain was ejected. When confronted with a theory that Paul's skull defect was a contact entrance wound, she cited the absence of soot, pellet distribution, wound geometry, facial preservation, and skull condition as reasons she disagreed.

Riemer returned on rebuttal after defense pathologist Jonathan Eisenstat characterized Paul's fatal injury as a contact shot from above and disputed the direction of one of Maggie's wounds. She rejected both interpretations based on her direct examinations and the anatomical findings. Cross-examination then addressed limited photographs, the absence of a brain X-ray, incomplete pellet counting, and her failure to collect, test, or previously report material she believed was consistent with shotgun packing. She acknowledged those documentation limits but retained her wound-direction conclusions.