Laura Rutland

Laura Rutland testified as a Colleton County Sheriff's Office detective involved in the initial response at Moselle. She obtained a search warrant for the property and served as the local agency's liaison while David Owen and SLED led the investigation.

Rutland described the bodies, water near the scene, and flat footwear impressions near the hangar that she considered very similar to Maggie Murdaugh's sandals. She acknowledged that other prints in the area could have belonged to her or Captain Jason Chapman.

Rutland also authenticated Alex Murdaugh's first recorded interview and recounted his statements about napping, visiting his mother, checking both victims' pulses, trying to turn Paul, and retrieving Paul's phone from his pocket. She testified that Murdaugh did not report having visited the kennels earlier that night. She described him as sober, responsive, and clean, with no apparent blood on his hands, arms, clothing, or shoes.

Cross-examination tested the limits of Rutland's visual inspection, omissions from the initial interview, documentation of the search warrant, and her account of photographed footwear impressions. She could not recall filing the warrant return, denied identifying the photographed boot prints as hers, and declined to infer that Murdaugh's clean appearance excluded involvement. On redirect and recross, she clarified SLED's leadership and qualified her description of Murdaugh's clothes as fresh-looking: they could have come from the laundry, and she considered them freshly washed because they remained dry while he was sweating after rain had begun.