Alex Murdaugh has been found guilty of murdering his wife and son after a jury of seven men and five women spent less than three hours deliberating.

The disgraced legal scion, 54, showed no emotion on his face but was shaking as the verdict was read out at the Colleton County courthouse in Walterboro, South Carolina, following six weeks of harrowing testimony.

His only surviving son Buster was stony-faced and put his head in his hands. Murdaugh turned to face the 26-year-old and his sister Lynn as he was cuffed and led away. Neither his younger brother John Marvin, who testified earlier this week, nor his elder sibling Randy were in court.

Murdaugh, whose family has wielded immense judicial power in the region for three generations, brutally shot dead his wife Maggie, 52, and younger son Paul, 22, at the family’s 1,800-acre hunting estate in Moselle on the night of June 7, 2021.

The disbarred attorney lied to cops about his alibi before making the sensational decision to take the stand where he changed his story to fit the damning evidence.

But the State convinced jurors with a video which proved he was at the scene just moments before he blasted Paul’s brains out with a shotgun and mercilessly turned an assault rifle on his wife of 27 years, shooting Maggie five times.

Murdaugh will return for sentencing at 9.30am Friday. He faces 30 years to life in prison after being convicted of two counts of murder and two weapons charges. 

Prosecutor Creighton Waters was cheered by the public as he addressed a press conference outside the court, proclaiming: ‘Justice was done today.

‘It doesn’t matter who your family is, it doesn’t matter how much money you have or people think you have, it doesn’t matter how prominent you are. If you do wrong and break the law and if you murder, then justice will be done in South Carolina.’

South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson said Maggie and Paul had been ‘brutally murdered … by someone that they loved and someone that they trusted.’

He paid tribute to his team for their work and said ‘we can’t bring them back but we can bring them justice.’

Murdaugh’s defense attorney Jim Griffin, who earlier broke down as he implored jurors not to find his client guilty, said: ‘Obviously we’re disappointed but until he’s sentenced we will have no further comment.’

Judge Clifton Newman dismissed a defense move for a mistrial and thanked the jury for their finding. The judge said: ‘The circumstantial evidence, direct evidence, all of the evidence pointed to one conclusion, and that’s the conclusion that you all reached.’

Murdaugh, who wept throughout the trial as the jury were told in gruesome detail how his wife and son were brutally executed and shown harrowing images of the crime scene, gave a blank expression as the judge spoke to the court. 

His eldest son Buster, who sat behind his father every day during the trial and testified for the defense, put his head in his hands. 

As he was cuffed by sheriff’s deputies Murdaugh turned to face his son Buster and sister Lynn. He then shook hands with his attorney Dick Harpootlian, a Democratic State Senator, and was escorted out of the room.

Murdaugh was loaded into the back of the black prison van which brings him to and from court everyday and ferried to the local Colleton County jail where he has been remanded in custody throughout the trial.