The man who bought the home where Alex Murdaugh murdered his wife and son has made a shocking claim that he uncovered a crucial piece of evidence proving the disgraced South Carolina lawyer is an innocent man.
Alexander Wallace Blair purchased the sprawling four-bedroom, four-and-a-half-bathroom Moselle Estate House and its 21-acre property in Islandton, SC, for $1 million in an auction in February 2024 and has since begun renovating the home.
Murdaugh received two life sentences without parole last year for the 2021 murders of his wife, Maggie, 52, and son Paul, 22, after crime scene experts determined he ambushed them at the estate’s dog kennels — believed to have not been included when the property was bought at auction.
Blair, however, told Realtor.com on Friday that the kennel was included and, despite having torn the structure down, has kept its door and window that contain bullet holes from the June 2021 shooting.
Now, having evaluated the evidence for himself, Blair suggested that Murdaugh was “too big” to have fired the deadly shots.
“[Murdaugh] is a big man, he was even bigger back then, and he’s too big for the bullets to have gone through in the way that they did,” he told the outlet.
Blair pointed out that Murdaugh, 65, was no saint but said he doesn’t “think [Murdaugh] did it.”
“Maybe it was karma for other things that he did,” he said. “But I don’t think he killed them.”
While Blair, who’s from Rock Hill — over 150 miles from Moselle — said he didn’t personally know Murdaugh, some of his new neighbors in the area who allegedly agree with him that the former lawyer did not kill Maggie and Paul.
“Everyone on that road is like, ‘No,’” he told the outlet.
Blair also said he has a set of keys and a keychain that once belonged to Maggie and that he’s holding onto them in case the family’s surviving son, Richard “Buster” Murdaugh, “wanted it back … to have something of his mother’s.”
The estate, which contained a whopping 1,700 acres (2.6 square miles) when the Murdaugh family owned it, was purchased by two businessmen, James Ayer and Jeffrey Godley, for $3.9 million in March 2023.
However, months after buying the land, the partners chose to divide it and put the home and its surrounding 21 acres back on the market for $1.95 million, and Blair was able to snag the property for $1 million, according to Realtor.com.
Godley previously said he and Ayer had no use for the 5,275-square-foot home and were only interested in the land for hunting, farming and timber.
Blair, a father of two, said he plans to use the estate as his “secondary residence” and hopes to remove the “bad stigma” surrounding it.
“Bad things have happened on every property,” he said, noting South Carolina was notorious for its plantations and “slave trading.”
“But you have a choice to either focus on the negative or to create a positive narrative. And that’s what I want to do.”
Nevertheless, Blair says he has installed a pond on the grounds, put up horse fences, torn down the kennels, and demolished Murdaugh’s private airplane hangar as part of the work.
He is also in the middle of renovating the house “roof to subfloor,” including adding an extension to the already massive home.
Blair expects the work to be done by mid-November.
Murdaugh has denied killing Maggie and Paul, despite a jury’s conviction.
He is serving two life terms for the double murders plus 27-year and 40-year sentences for financial crimes.
