Murdaugh jurors visit Moselle estate before closing arguments

Closing arguments have begun in the high-profile murder trial of Alex Murdaugh, the now-disbarred South Carolina attorney.

Mr Murdaugh, 54, has been charged with murder in the shooting deaths of his wife and son on the family's estate.

Jurors visited the sprawling, 1,700-acre hunting lodge on Wednesday morning to assess the space where Maggie and Paul Murdaugh were found dead in 2021.

The former lawyer has insisted he was not involved in the deaths.

Mr Murdaugh reported finding the bodies of his wife, Maggie, 52, and son, Paul, 22, near the dog kennels on the property in South Carolina's Colleton County.

His defence lawyer, Dick Harpootlian, asked Judge Clifton Newman to grant jurors time to visit the 1,700-acre estate, known as Moselle, to get a better idea of where the bodies were found relative to the kennels and the Murdaugh home, where Mr Murdaugh said he had been napping at the time of the killings.

"You just can't really appreciate the spatial issues without really seeing them," Mr Harpootlian told the court on Monday.

Prosecutors, however, have argued against granting jurors access to the estate, saying that the property has changed in the 20 months since the killings.

They said that some of the trees between the kennels and the Murdaugh home have grown taller and thicker.

Only the judge, members of the jury, police and security personnel were present for the visit, but members of the trial's media pool also paid a brief visit to the property on Wednesday morning.

"It is a heavy place to visit," the Wall Street Journal's Valerie Bauerlein wrote in a pool report. "The property has stood vacant for 20 months and the grass is high."

After seeing the kennels, a nearby shed and feed room, she observed: "There was no visible sign that two people had died in a violent manner in such close proximity, no blood stain or anything similar to it."

Moselle is where the family lived for several years. It includes their home, as well as dog kennels, a cabin and sprawling lands, fields and forests, where Mr Murdaugh would hunt with his two sons.

The estate is now listed under contract at $3.9m (£3.9m), CNN reports.

Mr Murdaugh's surviving son, Buster, testified that much of the estate is "really not even accessible" because it is filled with swamps and there are no built roadways in many parts.

If convicted, Mr Murdaugh faces 30 years in jail, though prosecutors have argued for a life sentence.